Finance Minister Anam Ramnarayana Reddy on Friday requested the Empowered Committee of Finance Ministers to accelerate the process of arriving at and early consensus on the nature and extent of the constitutional amendments, required to implement the Goods and Services Tax expeditiously in the overall national interest.
Speaking at the empowered committee meeting held at Mussori (Uttarakhand), Ramnarayana Reddy requested the committee to look into the aspect of Revenue Neutral Rate since the committee could not so far arrive at the RNT, of course, for several reasons. Sustained efforts are required to expeditiously work out at a reasonable Revenue Neutral Rat, which is highly essential for the implementation of the Goods and Service Tax Act. “I hope that the committee would be able to arrive at the rate at the earliest,” he said.
On IGST and Inter-State transactions, Ramanarayana Reddy suggested that IGST should be completely handed by the Centre. The exporting dealer will pay IGST should be completely handed by the Government of India, and, in the same way, the Importing dealer can claim ITC from the Centre at the time of filing return. In the process, the Importing dealer can adjust such ITC against CGST and IGST payable. This model or method will totally eliminate the need for settlement of IGST to be received from Government of India to States, States to Government of India.
“I hope the above models will go a long way in reducing the avoidable complexities in the process of implementation of the Goods and Services Tax Act,” he said.
The minister said that Andhra Pradesh Government was not in favour of adding more goods in goods list. He further added that there could be no place for the concept of Declared Goods during the GST regime, in as much as the rates of taxes for almost all the Goods are decided on the basis of consensus among the Centre and the States. Hence, a separate list of declared good need not continue. The proposal of place the mobile phones and tables in declared goods list is not acceptable to our state as a matter of principle, though the rate of tax at present for mobile phones and tablets in the AP is five per cent.
About Dual Control of Dealers, he suggested that Dealers with annual turnover up to Rs 1.50 crore will take registration from respective States and report to the respective State Governments. The Dealers with an annual turnover more than Rs 1.50 crore will report to both Government of India and respective States. However, dealers, having inter-state transactions, irrespective of annual turnover, shall report to both the Centre as well as respective States. He said the Andhra Pradesh Government has endorses the Empowered Committee about the Threshold for Dealers: The committee has recommended a threshold of Rs 25 lakh and composition scheme for dealers, having an annual turn between Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh. (INN)