The Congress party today described the GST as Grossly Scary Tax. Two senior Congress leaders P Chidambaram and Randeep Singh Surjewala today attacked the government which is celebrating the first anniversary of GST. Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram in a press conference said that the GST has increased the tax burden of the common citizen and it has certainly not reduced the tax burden as was promised. He further said: "The design, structure, infrastructure backbone, rate or rates and implementation of the GST were so flawed that GST has become a bad word among business persons, traders, exporters and the common citizens."
Surjewala said that the GST remains 'Grossly Scary Tax' for millions of traders, shopkeepers and businessmen. "No wonder GST's more popular description is 'Gabbar Singh Tax' than 'Genuine & Simple Tax' that it was meant to be," he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last year described GST as the Good and Simple Tax in response to Rahul Gandhi's earlier remark where the Congress President termed the GST as Gabbar Singh Tax. Surjewala also said that the multiple returns, multiple rules and multiple tax slabs has made life of an ordinary trader nightmarish. "A 'Single Tax GST', as promised remains a 'pipe dream'," he added.
GST, which was dubbed as India's biggest economic reform, today completed the first year and the government is celebrating the day by highlighting its achievements. Earlier today, Prime Minister Modi hailed the GST as a tool that has brought growth, simplicity and transparency. He, however, in an interview to Swarajya magazine, ruled out a single tax rate under the GST. He said Mercedes car and milk cannot be taxed at the same rate and accepting Congress party's demand for a uniform 18 per cent rate would lead to a spike in food and essential items' taxation.
The Prime Minister said: "It would have been very simple to have just one slab but it would have meant we could not have food items at zero per cent tax rate. Can we have milk and Mercedes at the same rate? "So, when our friends in Congress say that they will have just one GST rate, they are effectively saying they will tax food items and commodities, which are currently at zero or 5 per cent, at 18 per cent," PM Modi said.
In a separate event, acting Finance Minister Piyush Goyal spoke about the magnitude of the tax reform. He said: "GST is a landmark reform that has transformed the Nation into an economic union with the motto one nation, one tax, one market." Speaking on reduction of tax slabs under GST, Goyal clarified that the different tax slabs have been decided after due deliberations in the GST Council, keeping in mind the socio-economic make up of this country.
Union Minister Arun Jaitley listed out the successes that the GST has achieved in one year. He said that this reform has created a unified market, the cascading of taxes has been eliminated and the weighted average of total taxation basket has come down. The Minister informed that the total indirect tax collection for 9 month period in previous financial year post implementation of GST is about Rs 8.2 lakh crores, which if extrapolated for the whole year comes to about Rs. 11 lakh crores, an 11.9 per cent increase in indirect tax collections.