GST 2.0 big win for citizens: FM

Chennai: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday said the GST reforms are a huge victory for each and every citizen of the country.

Taking into account that every state in India has its own festivals, it has been decided to implement the GST reforms much ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's instruction of launching them before Deepavali festival, Sitharaman said at an event in Chennai.

In her address at the joint conclave of the trade and industries association on "Tax Reforms for Rising Bharat' organised by Chennai Citizens Forum, she said the beneficial impact of Goods and Services Tax would be there for all products from the start of the day till people go to bed.

“GST is now making its presence felt in every corner of daily life,” Sitharaman said, highlighting how the impact of recent GST reforms can be seen “from the moment people wake up to when they go to bed” benefiting citizens in everything from their morning tea to their dinner.

Explaining some of the key initiatives, Sitharaman said 99 per cent of all the goods which were earlier taxed at 12 per cent under GST have now been reduced to 5 per cent. The latest set of GST reforms are set to come into force from September 22.

Noting that the GST Council has reduced the tax rates for over 350 items, she pointed out that the Centre has introduced only 5 and 28 per cent slabs instead of the earlier practice of levying taxes under different slabs.

"We have also simplified the procedure for the traders also. There is no 28 per cent GST tax on any product," she remarked.

Referring to the increase in tax base from traders, she said before the GST was introduced in 2017, there were only 66 lakh traders who used to file their taxes. But today, 1.5 crore businesses have come under the GST fold in the last 8 years.

She said, "Opposition party leader Rahul Gandhi had termed the GST a Gabbar Singh Tax, but after the GST was introduced, the number of businesses which were paying taxes has been increased to 1.5 crore in the last 8 years as they realised that they would be able to benefit from it".

"This number of 1.5 crore traders filing GST over the last 8 years, will further increase in the future," she said, and added that because of that increase, the revenue to the Central and state governments has increased.

"In 2017, the tax collected was Rs 7.19 lakh crore and now the Gross GST collection has crossed Rs 22 lakh crore. On an average, Rs 1.8 lakh to 2 lakh crore revenue is collected by the Central and state governments. For example, the amount Rs 1.80 lakh crore gross revenue is divided into half in which the states get Rs 90,000 crore and Centre gets Rs 90,000 crore. Even from that Rs 90,000 crore revenue from the Centre's portion, around 41 per cent goes back to the states," she said. "From this, we can understand that public and the state government stand to benefit through the implementation of the GST," she added.