CA KAMAL GARG

A 4-tier GST tax structure of 5, 12, 18 and 28 per cent, with lower rates for essential items and the highest for luxury and de-merits goods that would also attract an additional cess, was decided by the all- powerful GST Council today. With a view to keeping inflation under check, essential items including food, which presently constitute roughly half of the consumer inflation basket, will be taxed at zero rate. The lowest rate of 5 per cent would be for common use items while there would be two standard rates of 12 and 18 per cent under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime targetted to be rolled out from April 1, 2017. Announcing the decisions arrived at the first day of the two-day GST Council meeting, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said highest tax slab will be applicable to items which are currently taxed at 30-31 per cent (excise duty plus VAT). Luxury cars, tobacco and aerated drinks would also be levied with an additional cess on top of the highest tax rate. The coll

Role of CBEC The CBEC is playing an active role in the drafting of GST law and procedures, particularly the CGST and IGST law, which will be exclusive domain of the Centre. This apart, the CBEC would need to prepare, in advance, for meeting the implementation challenges, which are quite formidable. The number of taxpayers is likely to go up significantly.  The existing IT infrastructure of CBEC would also need to be suitably scaled up to handle such large volumes of data. Based on the legal provisions and procedure for GST, the content of work-flow software such as ACES (Automated Central Excise & Service Tax) would require re-engineering. DG Systems has already constituted a Steering Committee for implementation of GST System for CBEC. The IT project of CBEC under GST has been approved by the Cabinet on 28th September, 2016. The name of this project is ‘ SAKSHAM ’ involving a total project value of Rs 2,256 crores.  A GST Implementation Advisory Committee has been consti

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is the central banking and monetary authority in India. RBI manages the country's money supply and foreign exchange and also serves as a bank for the Government of India and for the country's commercial banks. Banks can be broadly categorized into commercial banks, public sector banks, regional rural banks, private sector banks, foreign banks, co-operative banks, and term lending institutions, non-banking finance companies / housing finance companies. Public sector banks make up the largest category of banks in the Indian banking system. There are 28 public sector banks in India. After bank nationalization was completed in 1969 and 1980, the majority of Indian banks were public sector banks. In July 1993, as part of the banking reform process and as a measure to induce competition in the banking sector, RBI permitted entry by the private sector into the banking system. This resulted in the introduction of nine private sector banks. The Gover