GST Council may discuss tax on gold, key laws

Mumbai: The tenth sitting of the all-powerful GST Council may take up tax on gold which was earlier excluded from Council’s important meetings, according NDTV. Goods and Services Tax or One Nation One Tax regime as it is known intends to streamline the entire taxation process in country.

Key legislations that the Council was likely to take up today included an Integrated GST defining the inter-states trades, a State GST that defines power of states.

Besides, a legislation exploring ways to compensate states for revenue loss due to scrapping of taxes that were their purview up till now will also be discussed.

Since September last year, the Council has met nine times and has sailed through various contentious issues that included disagreement over dual control and cross empowerment of states.

The states have also been allowed to tax territorial waters under their jurisdictions, 12 nautical miles, that was again a major breakthrough in the GST talks. This was arrived at despite the Centre has control over territorial waters.

Earlier, the Centre and the states had agreed upon how to tax small tax payers whose annual turnover was Rs 1.5 crore or less than that. States wanted a 100 per cent control over them.

However, both reached an accord under which the Centre and the states will now tax small tax payers in 50:50 ratio. Apart from that finance minister Arun Jaitley had earlier said that the states will be cross empowered.