Sushil Kumar Modi, one of the GST council member said that he supports the GST tax revenue to be stabilized before the ministerial panel decides to further tweak the GST rates or merge the slabs.
While addressing Bharat Chamber of Commerce members he said, “Let revenue stabilize and tax buoyancy come, then the Council will look into rationalizing or merging tax slabs of 12 and 18 percent.”
He mentioned that after the last meeting of GST council, most of the products under high slab rate i.e 28% is reduced to lower rates and only 50 products exists now in high slab rate. In the last GST Council meeting at Guwahati, 90% of slab-related problems were resolved and the council is working to reduce the rest of the issues to be sorted out soon.
Albeit, he remained firm on the statement that the revenue collection for both the states and centre will increase in future and the new indirect tax will stabilize too.
He accepted that the GST implementation has created problems for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and the textiles industry because previously they were not entitled to pay any taxes under the value-added tax (VAT) regime.
He explained, as the system stabilizes with the thunder of GST, then only GST council can look into the issues like including electricity duty, property stamp duty, and petroleum products under Goods and Services Tax.
Considering the technical glitches with the GST network, he spoke that as the issues on the common portal are reducing now, the GST return filing will become easy soon.
Modi, deputy chief minister of Bihar said, “Network issues are reducing. 13 lakh returns are being filed and in one hour, the network is capable of handling one lakh returns.” He requested the businesses to render the GST benefits of tax reduction on various products to consumers and mentioned about anti-profiteering committee as well. Bharat Chamber President Sitaram Sharma said there are many issues in GST network and credit passing which need to be sorted out.