Congress to raise GST rate structure, compliance issues

New Delhi, Oct 31: The Congress will raise issues of complication of compliance, bringing down rate structure of the GST and GST Network issues in the next GST Council meeting, scheduled for November 9-10 in Guwahati.

The party said it was hopeful that the GST Council would look into these recommendations seriously and also lower the GST rates.

Asked about the specific demand of the Congress that it would raise in the GST Council meeting, Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal said: "We would raise the issue of problems of compliance with small and medium enterprises and single unit people and job workers.

"They have been brought under the tax net. As they were previously exempted, they should be exempted. Compliance issues are huge."

Secondly, it would be about the rate structure of the GST to see if the rates could be brought down, Badal said.

"Third, of course is the GST Network which is crashing every other minute. Even the Suvidha Centre takes two hours to file a return. There are many issues but these are three specific ones which we will be raising," said Badal, who is also a member of the GST Council.

He said that they were also looking for exemption for job workers in the cycle industry, textiles, leather industry, and gems and jewellery industry.

To a question whether these issues were raised earlier too, Badal said: "I must say that there was a certain amount of arrogance with the government when we had made these demands in Hyderabad and subsequent meetings.

"But ever since Yashwant Sinha's letter has become public and there is a groundswell of opinion against the present form of GST, they are a lot more amenable now to our suggestions," he added.

In a meeting on GST, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, along with P. Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh and finance ministers of the Congress-ruled states, examined the "mess created by Modi government on account of inherent flaws in the design, architecture and rates of the GST".

"If compliance for small manufacturers, micro and small industries and people with small turnovers is not possible, it just won't happen," said Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala.

"The net consequence is that you are charging the consumer higher taxes without the consumer knowing it. They are going to raise the issue of distinction in taxation architecture first, see how compliances can be sorted out," he added.