With less than a month left for GST rollout, seven states, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir, are yet to pass their legislations required for implementing the new indirect tax regime.
So far, 24 states and Union Territories, including Delhi, Odisha and Puducherry, have passed the State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) Act in their respective legislative assemblies.
Seven states viz Meghalaya, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Jammu & Kashmir and West Bengal are yet to pass the SGST law.
As per the GST Constitutional amendment, all states have to pass SGST bills by 15 September, 2017, failing which they will lose their taxation powers.
West Bengal wants the Centre to delay roll out of the GST by a month and the issue was raised by state Finance Minister Amit Mitra at the meeting of the GST Council last week as it will have serious problems as the IT Infrastructure required to manage at GSTN are not in place.
It may be noted that practically all the GST returns forms have been changed as released recently from what has been in circulation for almost a year now. GSTN along with all members of the GST ecosystem viz the GSP’s and ASP’s will struggle to get everything in place before the 1st July 2017 rollout deadline.