GST bill now a law

• The Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill, 2014 (i.e. the Constitution (101 Amendment), Act, 2016) popularly known as the (GST) Bill has been passed by the President of India, and is now a law.
• A GST Council with representatives from the Centre and States will be formed within 60 days of the enactment of the Bill on September 08, 2016. Headed by Mr Arun Jaitley, the Council will comprise of Finance Ministers from the states. The Council will be entrusted with the task of recommending the tax rates, taxes to be subsumed etc. 
• There after three more laws will need to be passed namely the Central GST, Integrated GST by the Parliament and separate State GST for each State by the respective state assemblies, and the Rules there under. (Model GST Law announced on June 14,2016).
• It is thus highly probable that GST would be finally introduced by April 2017, as contemplated by the Government.

About GST:

• India currently has various Indirect taxes that are levied at both Federal and State level. It is proposed to introduce GST in India to subsume the various Indirect taxes.
• Currently there is a burden of "tax on tax“, there is a “set off” mechanism for only few of the taxes listed in the slides above. Further the “set off” of one taxis not available for all the other taxes.
• GST is essentially a tax only on value addition at each stage, and a supplier at each stage is permitted to set-off, through a tax credit mechanism, the GST paid on the purchase of goods and services as available for set-off on the GST to be paid on the supply of goods  and services. GST would provide a mechanism of "set off" for tax paid on inputs, and thus remove the cascading effect of tax.
• GST will reduce the multiplicity of taxes, and thus bring down the compliance cost.
• GST is a simplified tax structure, easier to implement and apply.
• There will be reduction of litigation in respect of areas currently sought to be taxed by both centre and state, or transactions required to be split for various taxes.
• There would be a transparent and complete chain of set-offs, this will help widening the coverage of tax base and improve tax compliance. Accordingly, this may lead to higher generation of revenues for the Government.