GST Council to meet today, to discuss model laws

The Dollar Business Bureau 

The GST Council’s two-day meeting will be beginning from Thursday to consider the model laws on Goods and Services Tax (GST) and to resolve differences on the controversial issue of authority over assessees in the new GST regime.

This meeting will be the seventh of the GST Council, which is chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and has ministers from states as members.

In its last meeting earlier this month, the Council had cleared as many as 20 chapters of the model GST law. In its meeting on Thursday, it will have discussions on the 7 remaining chapters and after that on Friday, it will take up the issue of dual control.

As they fail to come out on consensus in the Council meeting on the subsequent legislations on GST, i.e., Central GST, Integrated GST and compensation law, it could not be introduced in the Parliament’s Winter Session which ended last week. This has put in danger the April 2017 deadline for rolling out of the GST.

Experts are of the view that GST implementation should be postponed by 3 months to July 2017 as industry would require time for preparing the IT infrastructure.