By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, DEC 24, 2016: BRIMMING with goodwill and a sense of satisfaction about his achievement at the 7th GST Council Meeting here yesterday, the Union Finance Minister, Mr Arun jaitley, said that a major headway was made when the Council discussed all the 197 provisions of the Model GST Law and approved the same. Since the SGST Law is going to be the mirror image of CGST Law, it also stands deemed approved. But the FM hastened to add that the changes made in the draft laws are now to be legally vetted and to be put up again before the Council for a formal stamp of approval before the same is tabled in the Parliament and the respective state legislatures.

The second milestone of achievement for the two-day deliberation was the approval of the Compensation Law which is to be presented before the Parliament alone. Of course, some States continued to protest that such compensation should come from the Consolidated Fund of India and not through the levy of CESS on a part of the GST tax base but the same was overruled. And the provisions of the law were approved with a minor change in the periodicity of the payment from quarterly to bi-monthly.

The Finance Minsiter also stated that although the Council also discussed the issues of dual control and cross-empowernment but they are now to be taken up at the next meeting scheduled for January 3 & 4, 2017. The provisions relating to these contentious issues have been left blank in the model law for the time being. Once these issues are discussed and finalised, those provisions would be inserted into the GST Bill which is now going to be prepared.

One issue which was not debated at this meeting was that of the IGST. The two contentious issues relating to IGST are the definition of the 'State Territory' and whether the IGST powers can be shared with the State. In a nutshell, the issue of coastal States relating to their powers to levy tax on supply of goods or services in the territorial waters is to be debated at the next meeting.

Mr Jaitley also pointed out that a parallel work is being done by the GST Rates Committee which would be submitting its report to the Council and the same can take up the same at its future meeting.