One Hundred and First Amendment to the Constitution of India

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is a Value added Tax (VAT) proposed to be a comprehensive indirect tax levy on manufacture, sale and consumption of goods as well as services at the national level. It replaces all indirect taxes levied on goods and services by the Indian Central and state governments. It is aimed at being comprehensive for most goods and services.

Background

An empowered union committee was set up by the Vajpayee administration to streamline the GST model to be adopted and to develop the required back-end infrastructure that would be needed for its implementation.

In his budget speech on 28-February-2006, P. Chidambaram, the Finance Minister, announced the target date for implementation of GST to be 01-April-2010 and formed another empowered committee of State Finance Ministers to design the road map. The committee submitted its report to the government in April-2008 and released its First Discussion Paper on GST in India in 2009. Since the proposal involved reform/ restructuring of not only indirect taxes levied by the Central but also the States, the responsibility of preparing a Design and Road Map for the implementation of GST was assigned to the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers (EC). In April-2008, the EC submitted a report, titled "A Model and Road map for Goods and Services Tax (GST) in India" containing broad recommendations about the structure and design of GST. In response to the report, the Department of Revenue made some suggestions to be incorporated in the design and structure of proposed GST bill. Based on inputs from GoIN and States, The EC released its First Discussion Paper on Goods and Services Tax in India on 10-November-2009 with the objective of generating a debate and obtaining inputs from all stakeholders.

A dual GST module for the country has been proposed by the EC. This dual GST model has been accepted by centre. Under this model GST have two components viz. the Central GST to be levied and collected by the Centre and the State GST to be levied and collected by the respective States. Central Excise duty, additional excise duty, Service Tax, and additional duty of customs (equivalent to excise), State VAT, entertainment tax, taxes on lotteries, betting and gambling and entry tax (not levied by local bodies) would be subsumed within GST. Other taxes which will be subsumed with GST are Octroi, entry tax and luxury tax thus making it a single indirect tax in India.

To take the GST related work further, a Joint Working Group consisting of officers from Central as well as State Government was constituted. This was further trifurcated into three Sub-Working Groups to work separately on draft legislation required for GST, process/forms to be followed in GST regime and IT infrastructure development needed for smooth functioning of proposed GST. In addition, an Empowered Group for development of IT Systems required for Goods and Services Tax regime has been set up under the chairmanship of Dr. Shruti Negi.