West Bengal to meet goods and services tax deadline

Kolkata, Dec 11: West Bengal's Left Front government is determined to meet the April 1, 2010, deadline to enforce the goods and services tax (GST) in the state, Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta said Friday.

"As stated by the union government, we're determined to impose GST in our state by April 1, 2010. There will be no change in the process of implementation," Dasgupta said.

He was addressing the national executive committee meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) here.

The minister said the state government had already held national as well as state-level interactions with various trade organisations.

"We had a very positive discussion regarding the enforcement of the GST. All trade bodies - be it small, medium and large, they all supported the introduction of this tax structure," Dasgupta said.

GST is a tax on goods and services with comprehensive and continuous chain of set-off benefits from the producer's point and service provider's point up to the retailer's or consumer's level.

According to the minister, GST is not simply value-added tax (VAT) plus service tax but an improvement over the present system of VAT and disjointed service tax which is a significant step forward in tax reforms in India.

"If the GST is properly implemented, it would benefit the buyers to a great extent," Dasgupta said.

He said a joint working group comprising officials of the central and state governments is working to prepare a draft legislation for constitutional amendment, another for Central GST (CGST), suitable model legislation for state GST (SGST) and rules and procedures for CGST and SGST.