Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Says GST Passage Historic

New Delhi: Dubbing passage of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Constitution Amendment Bill as "historic", Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said manufacturing taxes and VAT will come down with the new national sales tax but the same for services tax will be decided by the Centre and states.

The GST, which will subsume over a dozen central and state levies including excise duty, service tax and VAT, is "perhaps the most important" tax reform, he said soon after the Rajya Sabha overwhelmingly voted for the legislation.

"Today is a historic day for the reason that Rajya Sabha has passed the GST bill which have been held up for a very long time. All members present at the time of voting voted in favour of the bill," Mr Jaitley told reporters in Parliament house.

Thanking Congress and other opposition parties for supporting the legislation, he said proceedings in the upper house demonstrated to the world that this is a great day for Indian democracy and Indian federalism.

"In fact Indian democracy and Indian federalism are at their very best in as much as all national political parties and regional parties, state governments have come together to usher a major taxation reform.. The government wanted to build a larger consensus, which we succeeded in doing," he said.

Asked whether the implementation of the GST would mean rise in cost of air travel, mobile bills and eating out because of incidence of service tax going up in the new regime, he said that tax rate would be decided by the GST Council, comprising of the Centre and the states.

"The central and state governments have to work together to make this a great success. Overall, I think we had an excellent debate," he told reporters.

He said that although every state government is on board in order to implement one of the most important taxation reform in India, the fact is that it has been passed unanimously all regional and national parties have actively supported it.

Later Mr Jaitley in a tweet said, "GST once enforced in the country, it would boost GDP growth, attract higher investment and would promote Ease Of Doing Business in India."

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