New Delhi: It is likely to be a stormy Friday at Vigyan Bhawan where the Centre and the stateswill tackle at least three contentious issues even as they agreed to try and roll out goods and services tax from April.
"With regard to composition (scheme) we have finalised our proposal which has been unanimously accepted by the members. With regard to threshold for exemptions, there are two sets of suggestions which have come. We have converged those two different views... we will continue the meeting tomorrow and thereafter, so that we are able to converge to one particular figure as far as the exemptions are concerned," finance minister Arun Jaitley told reporters. The minister said that several issues such as the the timetable for rollout was agreed upon in the first meeting of GST Council on Thursday.
Revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia said a consensus on compounding or composition scheme was reached which decided that traders with gross turnover of up to Rs 50 lakh will pay 1-2% tax. The scheme provides for an easier method of calculating the tax liability by allowing option for GST registration for dealers with turnover below the cut-off to opt for compounding and avoid the "normal track", which comes with more paperwork.
On the issue of cross-empowerment, several states led by West Bengal want that units with turnover of up to Rs 1.5 crore to be under the exclusive domain of states for audit and collection purposes. Again, this is not acceptable to the Centre, which has argued that around 90% of the units in this segment would be service-based entities and the states are not equipped to tackle it. Besides, it has said that it would not be able to monitor these units.