Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said the party will reform the Goods and Services Tax (GST) system implemented by the Modi government by introducing one tax slab system, if it comes to power at the Centre. GST will be capped at 18% and the largest number of items that are used by the poor will be kept out of the tax system, he declared.
“Our position is very clear. When we come to power we will reform the current GST and we will simplify it, ” Mr. Gandhi said at an interaction session with professionals and business community in Kalaburagi. “The reason why I am calling it Gabbar Singh Tax (GST) is because at one level it is structurally flawed... and at the second level it is a self- inflicting move. India did not have to hurt itself.”
Replying to various questions on the Indian economy, the Congress chief said, “What we find is that Gabbar Sing Tax has complicated your life. The Congress party has a concept of GST and the concept was very simple...that is one tax slab for entire nation.”
“Let me remind you what the idea of GST was? The idea of GST was to make your life simple. The NDA government led by BJP had a long battle with us in parliament. And we kept telling them that please for God’s sake do not put this five slabs of tax and they did not listen to us. Eventually they passed the GST and you see the result.”
The Congress leaders including former prime minister Manmohan Singh and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram told Finance Minister Arjun Jaitley not to implement the new tax regime without a pilot test.
The Congress requested the Modi government not to implement the untested system on 1.3 billion people. But Mr Jaitley’s response was that Mr Modi has decided to implement the new tax regime from midnight of June 30, Mr Gandhi said.
Entrepreneurs from the Kalaburagi district and Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and IT & BT minister Priyank Kharge were present on the dais.
