GST Midnight launch, Special Midnight Session in Parliament on June 30

By Shariq Hussain

Posted on June 20, 2017

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, will mark roll out of Goods and Services Tax (GST) will be launched from midnight of June 30 – July 1.

According to the sources, the Narendra Modi government has proposed to hold the special session of both Houses from 11 pm on June 30th till 00:10 am on July 1 where President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will address the lawmakers.

The government will use the circular-shaped Central Hall, perhaps for the first time, to launch a new taxation system that is set to dramatically re-shape the over $2 trillion economies.
President Pranab Mukherjee, Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, LokSabha Speaker and former PMs Manmohan Singh and HD Deve Gowda will be among those who will attend the special event. They will be on the dais for GST launch.

Industries are being ready to brace themselves for the unified tax regime, GST compliance. To help the companies, especially small taxpayers to get GST compliant, GST Council has extended the timeline for the filing of tax returns by two months.
The Central Hall was selected considering the importance of the new tax code that unifies more than a dozen separate levies to create a single market with a population greater than the US, Europe, Brazil, Mexico and Japan put together.

The Finance Minister has also cleared that most states had accepted the amendments made to the act and had already paved way for its implementation. GST has been dubbed as the most significant economic reform since BJP government came to power in 2014. It is expected to add as much as 2 percentage points to the GDP growth rate besides raising government revenues by widening the tax net.

A four-rate structure that exempts or imposes a low rate of tax of 5 per cent on essential items and a top rate of 28 percent on cars and consumer durables has been finalized. The other slabs of tax are 12 and 18 per cent.

GST Midnight launch, Special Midnight Session in Parliament on June 30