Traders' body hails passage of GST legislations in Parliament

Traders' body CAIT today welcomed the passage of four key GST legislations in Parliament, saying the trading community stands with the Centre and states for timely implementation of the indirect tax regime.
In a statement, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said it is imperative upon the government now to conduct a massive outreach programme with small businesses in the country who are the real carriers of GST being the last mile contact with the consumer.
Parliament today passed four legislations to pave the way for roll out of the historic Goods and Services Tax (GST) from the target date of July 1.

"It is a path breaking step in taxation regime and integration of both goods & services will culminate in building a congenial & cohesive atmosphere for ease of doing business in India.
"The GST will bring down cascading effect of taxes on value of goods and services and integration of services will enable the manufacturing sector to avail input tax credit on services availed which hopefully will bring down the prices of large number of commodities," the traders' body said.
CAIT National President B C Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said the GST will replace ten-year old VAT taxation system which has resulted into wide disparities and ambiguity and became an object of great harassment, victimisation and rampant corruption due to multiple taxes and multiple authorities.

"Prior to VAT, the Sales Tax was also instrumental in giving same treatment and therefore the GST will liberate the traders from the clutches of multiple taxation after sufferings of several decades," they said.

The Central GST Bill, 2017; The Integrated GST Bill, 2017; The GST (Compensation to States) Bill, 2017; and the Union Territory GST Bill, 2017 were returned by the Rajya Sabha after negation of a host of amendments moved by the opposition parties.
The Lok Sabha had passed these bills on March 29.
All the states will now have to pass the States GST Bill after which the new indirect tax regime can be rolled out.