Background
When the Finance Minister presented the Interim Budget last
year, he held out hope for an agreement between the Centre and
States on the open issues, such as compensation for CST and under
GST, and loss of autonomy in matters of taxation. There were some
open points, including the tax treatment of petroleum, and about
which taxes would be subsumed into the GST.
122nd Constitution Amendment Bill
The 122nd Constitution Amendment Bill, which was tabled in
December, provides answers to some of the key questions relating to
the structure of India's GST. The Bill proposes to confer
concurrent taxing powers to the Union and the States, to replace
the present mutually exclusive but cascading structure wherein the
Centre taxes the manufacture of goods and provision of services,
and the States tax sales, including deemed sales, of goods, and
collect an assortment of taxes such as entertainment tax, excise
duties on alcoholic beverages and on medicinal and
