New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced that India's biggest tax reform since Independence, the national Goods and Services Tax or GST, will be launched at midnight on June 30. Mr Jaitley said President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and two of his predecessors, Dr Manmohan Singh and HS Deve Gowda, will be on stage in the Central Hall of Parliament for the launch. PM Modi will deliver a speech at the special gathering of parliamentarians. All Chief Ministers will be invited for the inauguration, said the Finance Minister, who has repeatedly said that the GST launch would not be delayed, as requested by some states like West Bengal.
The GST, India's most ambitious tax reform, replaces an unwieldy patchwork of tariffs and creates a single economic zone with common indirect taxes - something that neither the European Union nor the United States can boast.
The government has said GST could add two percentage points to economic growth.
There have been concerns about the preparedness of the GST Network, the IT system that marks a technological leap forward for India - it will be driven by an IT back end that can process up to 5 billion invoices a month. The tax reform also poses a huge challenge with tax collectors needing to be trained and companies brought up to speed on a levy that experts say will force them to overhaul business processes from front to back.
With company owners using their personal tax numbers to comply with the GST, the government expects income tax dodgers to have to come clean. Only around 3 percent of people in India pay income tax.
The GST, India's most ambitious tax reform, replaces an unwieldy patchwork of tariffs and creates a single economic zone with common indirect taxes - something that neither the European Union nor the United States can boast.
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The government has said GST could add two percentage points to economic growth.
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There have been concerns about the preparedness of the GST Network, the IT system that marks a technological leap forward for India - it will be driven by an IT back end that can process up to 5 billion invoices a month. The tax reform also poses a huge challenge with tax collectors needing to be trained and companies brought up to speed on a levy that experts say will force them to overhaul business processes from front to back.
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With company owners using their personal tax numbers to comply with the GST, the government expects income tax dodgers to have to come clean. Only around 3 percent of people in India pay income tax.
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