The Bombay High Court on Thursday reserved its order after hearing a PIL seeking postponement of the implementation of India’s much awaited indirect tax law, i.e Goods and
A bench comprising Justice VK Tahilramani and Justice SK Shinde heard arguments from Additional Solicitor-General Anil Singh and submissions made by petitioner Dr KS Pillai, who appeared in person.
The crux of the arguments made by Mr. Pillai was that Union government cannot implement such a major ‘constitutional changes’ on Tax Reforms in middle of a financial year that too “without proper preparations”.
PIL before Bombay HC seeking Postponement of GST Rollout [Read Petition]
Rebutting these arguments, Anil Singh submitted that over 6.5 million existing tax payers have been migrated to the proposed GST regime. Therefore, there would not be any problem in the implementation of GST from 1st July.
Under GST, multiple state taxes such as value-added tax, purchase tax, entertainment tax and central taxes including central excise duty, countervailing duty, service tax and a number of cesses would be subsumed with a view to create a seamless national market. The move is expected to increase efficiency and boost growth and the Government is all set to rollout the GST Law from July 1st onwards.
For the smooth rollout of the GST regime, the government has already deferred the implementation of provisions relating to TDS (Section 51) and TCS (Section 52) of the CGST / SGST Act 2017 after considering the opinion of the traders. Further, the provisions relating to E-way Bills have also been postponed due to lack of IT system.
The Government has also given a two-months relaxation for the filing of returns.
