New Delhi, Sep 4: With the GST Council approving a complete overhaul of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, the Congress on Thursday termed it a “GST 1.5” and said the wait for a “true GST 2.0” continues.
The opposition party also demanded that all states should be given compensation for a period of five years, considering 2024-25 as the base year, citing that the reduction in rates would have an adverse effect on their revenue.
Several Congress leaders claimed that former party chief Rahul Gandhi had suggested the changes to the GST regime years ago and the government eventually had to “follow his advice”.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said that for almost a decade, the party has been demanding simplification of GST. “The Modi government changed ‘One Nation, One Tax’ to ‘One Nation, 9 Taxes’. It included tax slabs of 0%, 5%, 12%, 18%, 28% and special rates of 0.25%, 1.5%, 3% and 6%,” he said.
“The Congress party had demanded GST 2.0 with a simple and rational tax system in its 2019 and 2024 manifestos. We had also demanded simplification of the complex compliances of GST, which had badly affected MSMEs and small businesses,” he said.
On February 28, 2005, the Congress-UPA government formally announced GST in the Lok Sabha. In 2011, when the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee brought the GST Bill, the BJP opposed it, Kharge said.
He said that when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, he had strongly opposed GST.
“Today, this same BJP government celebrates record GST collections, as if it has done a great job by collecting tax from the common people. For the first time in the history of the country, farmers have been taxed. This Modi government imposed GST on at least 36 items of the agricultural sector,” Kharge said.
The Modi government imposed GST on everyday things like milk-curd, flour-grains, even children’s pencils-books, oxygen, insurance and hospital expenses, he said. That is why we named this GST of the BJP as “Gabbar Singh Tax”, Kharge said.
He also claimed that in the last 5 years, Income Tax collection increased by 240% and GST collection increased by 177%, he claimed. (PTI)
