Union finance minister Piyush Goyal had to face criticism from the representatives of trade associations on the implementation of goods and services tax (GST) at a meeting held in Jaipur on Saturday.
Sarafa association office-bearers said that smuggling of gold and silver has increased after the GST came into effect.
Laghu Udyog Bharti president Omprakash Mittal said that 18% GST on job work was very high and should be brought down. Other association office-bearers including idol makers also urged the minister to bring down the GST. The association office-bearers compared staff of GST director general (DG) with “Yamraj” saying that they get threats of arrest. Credai Rajasthan chairman Gopal Gupta also urged the minister to bring down the GST on sale of constructed houses.
Earlier, Goyal in his address said that the GST Council could look at rationalising tax rates on some items on case to case basis after ensuring balance with revenue collection. “GST has been very successful and the rates on 328 products have been brought down since its implementation,” he said.
The council, in its next meeting on July 21, will also discuss ease of filing returns as well as ease of assessment, Goyal said. There are four GST rates at present, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%.
Rolled out on July 1, 2017, the GST had subsumed over a dozen local levies and transformed India into a single market with seamless flow of goods. In the first year of GST in 2017-18, the government earned Rs 7.41 lakh crore from taxes. The average monthly collection was Rs 89,885 crore. In the current fiscal, the collections in April touched a record Rs 1.03 trillion, followed by Rs 94,016 crore in May and Rs 95,610 crore in June.

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