Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Mr. Arun Jaitley recently said that the states are not in favor of including petrol and diesel into Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime at the moment, ruling out any immediate levy of the new indirect tax on these petroleum products.
While the new tax regime was rolled out from 1st July onwards it was declared that the petroleum products, liquor, real estate and electricity were kept out of GST at the final stage of consensus-building during the early days of the Narendra Modi government as part of a ‘give and take’ deal to win the support of states for the historic tax reform. That means the said products will continue to attract duties like central excise duty and Value Added Tax (VAT).
Finance Minister Mr. Jaitley said that “So far the mood of states (most of the States) is not in favor of including it (in GST) at the moment. But I am sure as the GST experience moves on, I think, natural gas, real estate — these are areas which are to be brought in and then probably at some stage we will keep trying for petrol, diesel, and potable alcohol.”
He further said that “GST broadly has settled down. Almost in every meeting now, we are able to rationalize the tariffs and this process will continue. It will continue with the structure tariffs being rationalized and the structure itself being rationalized as the collections go up.”
Mr. Arun Jaitley also specified in his union budget 2018-2019 that the Government has set a fiscal deficit target of 3.3 percent of GDP in 2018-19, down from 3.5 percent this fiscal.
