The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has strongly refuted the charge made by Congress President Rahul Gandhi terming GST as Gabbar Singh Tax and his intentions to replace the existing GST with a new set of GST 2.0. In a tweet made him by today he again reaffirmed it and said that it has destroyed Country’s economy and resulted in greater unemployment. The CAIT while condemning the statement of Shri Gandhi said that as per his behaviour he is commenting without knowing the factual ground realities. CAIT Secretary General Mr. Praveen Khandelwal challenged Mr. Gandhi to hold an open debate on this issue on any public platform if he is so confident of his intentions. Merely making lofty statements in the air will not decide the traders. It appears that his coterie has not informed him about the latest developments in GST.
Khandelwal said that Rahul Gandhi should accept our challenge of holding an open debate at any public place of his choice as it will decide whether the current GST is a favorable law or needs to be scrapped. He should accept the challenge in the larger interest of the Country.
“The current format of GST has relaxed the business community to a great extent. Previously visits of Inspectors at shops of traders were a daily routine but since GST is implemented no Inspector has visited any shop across the Country. The GST has stopped visits of traders to tax departments. There is no human interface and traders getting rid of mass corruption that was prevailing in tax departments,” said Khandelwal.
Submission of one documents several times is over now and no document is needed to be submitted to the department. Everything is now online reliving the traders from botheration of filing lots of papers. Trader’s up to annual turnover of Rs. 1.5 crore can opt for composition scheme and get received from GST. Traders having an annual turnover of upto Rs. 40 lakhs need not seek registration under GST. Tax rates on maximum items have been reduced to a great extent. Filing of several forms is replaced by filing one Return Form now. Besides various other benefits are accrued from the current GST taxation system.
He said that it is true that the current GST tax structure needs to be made more simplified and instead of monthly return there should be a provision for filing return quarterly. The return form should be very simple and of one page only. Disparities & anomalies in tax rates of different items need to be sorted out. Under the highest slab of 28%, only luxurious goods should be kept and rest other goods should be placed under other lower tax slabs. Only one GST number should be required to trade anywhere in India and there should be no need to seek separate GST number in each state. The tax rate of Raw Material should not exceed the tax rate of finished goods. Petrol & Diesel should be brought under GST. The CAIT will place all these issues in GST Council and future Union Government and all State Governments so that these issues are incorporated in GST.
Khandelwal further said, Gandhi has declared to replace GST with a new GST 2.0 but he has not elaborated anything about his proposed GST 2.0. Whether he has taken the approval of the State Government because under GST Act without the concurrence of State Government no amendments can be made in GST Act and there are very few Congress-ruled States and as such his suggestion seems to be not implementable and that is why traders and others do not take seriously his comments about GST.
