Twenty four states have passed the State Goods and Services Tax Bill with Manipur clearing the legislation on Monday, the finance ministry said in a media statement on Monday.
There are seven states which now need to clear the legislation at their respective assemblies before the rollout of the new indirect tax regime. These include:
- Meghalaya
- Punjab
- Tamil Nadu
- Kerala
- Karnataka
- Jammu & Kashmir
- West Bengal
The SGST Bill is a replica of the Central Goods and Services Tax Bill, and gives states the power to tax intra-state movement of goods and services.
With just three weeks left for the rollout of GST, states will have to rush to pass this legislation to implement the indirect tax regime by the proposed July 1 deadline.
Both Centre and states will have to implement GST at least by September 16 as they will lose power to levy indirect taxes after the said date until they decide to make amendments.
After the GST Council’s meeting on Saturday, West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra told BloombergQuint that GSTN, the IT platform for GST, will not be ready by July 1, 2017, making the case for a deferment of the rollout date.
“GST itself is totally dependent on the digital platform of GSTN. If GSTN has a bug, there is a problem in the entire GST structure. So why not do the verification to the last point having seen in the world, such massive cyber attacks. All these will require more time,” he said.
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