Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said that the Congress will reform the Goods and Service Tax (GST) implemented by the Modi government with one tax if it comes to power at the Centre.
The Congress would introduce one tax capped at 18 per cent. The largest number of items that are used by the common people and the poor will be kept out of the tax system, he said.
“Our (Congress) position is very clear. When we come to power we will reform the current GST and we will simplify it. We will attempt to have one tax and we will try to remove a huge amount of complications,” Mr. Gandhi said at an interaction session with professionals and business community in Kalaburagi on the last day of his Janaashirvada Yatra in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region of the State.
Mr. Gandhi, who criticised the implementation of the GST, said “I am calling it Gabbar Singh Tax (GST) because it is at one level structurally flawed and you are seeing that...and at the second level it is a self-inflicted 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 Singh Tax has complicated your life. The Congress party has a concept of GST and the concept was very simple...that is one tax for entire nation.”
“Let me remind you what the idea of GST was. It 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 not to have five slabs of tax and they did not listen to us. Eventually they passed the GST and you see the result.”
Congress leaders including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram told Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to 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.
