FM Arun Jaitley is hopeful of GST rollout from April

Gandhinagar: With states and the Centre still locked in stalemate over control of tax payers, finance minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said that the issue will be resolved in the next few weeks for the rollout of the GST regime from April 1.

The all-powerful GST Council, which has been deadlocked in the past few meetings, will meet on January 16 to discuss the issue of jurisdiction over assessees as well as taxation of trade in territorial waters.

“Most of the issues have been sorted out, some critical issues remain and these critical issues over the next few weeks we will try and solve out,” he said addressing the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit here.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST), which is to subsume most of the central and state taxes like excise, service tax and VAT, needs to be rolled out latest by September 16, 2017, he said.

Under the Constitutional Amendment passed by Parliament for the GST implementation, some of the existing levies would expire after September 16.

Mr Jaitley said the government was aiming to implement the new sales tax from April this year. “We would want it to be implemented from April if all issues are resolved.”

Once implemented, he said, GST combined with more digitised economy resulting from currency demonetisation and a more efficient tax system will “make India look much better, make our economy look much cleaner, much bigger”.

He hoped that the industry, assessee and states will eventually cooperate and make GST as well as the two moves successful.