The Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers on GST in their meeting in November will discuss the Union government’s proposal of including both petroleum products and liquor under the ambit of the Goods and Services tax (GST).
“The major change is certain exclusions were made in the original draft, exclusion of certain goods from the GST, like petroleum products and liquor.
“Now the government of India says these goods will come under GST...We have decided that detailed discussion will take place in the next meeting in Meghalaya,” Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers Chairman Abdul Rahim Rather told reporters in New Delhi.
In the revised draft of the Constitution Amendment Bill circulated to the states, Centre proposed that these items should not be constitutionally debarred.
The government circulated the revised draft after incorporating the proposals of the standing committee on finance that submitted its report last month.
Mr. Rather, who is Finance Minister of Jammu and Kashmir said, the Empowered Committee has decided to set up a sub-committee comprising central and state government officials to reconcile the recommendations of the standing committee, the revised draft of the constitution amendment Bill, and the decisions taken by the states in their meeting in Bhubaneswar in January over the design of GST.
“This sub-committee which we have constituted will go through all the three types of recommendations and come up with their recommendations before the next meeting of Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers,” he said.
Though the states had agreed earlier to include petroleum under GST in the constitution, there was no such agreement on liquor.
Roll-out of GST, which will empower the Centre and states to simultaneously tax supply of goods and services, had missed several deadlines due to differences between states and the Centre over contentious issue of CST compensation and design of the GST structure.
The Constitutional Amendment Bill was introduced in Parliament in 2010. The government hopes to table the constitution amendment Bill in the winter session of Parliament.
