Day 2 of GST Council meet: What to expect

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council is slated to meet on Wednesday for the Day 2 of its two-day meet. The GST Council, chaired by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, was incorporated on September 22, 2016.

On Day 2 of the two-day meet, the Council is likely to make consensus on key issues including dual control over assesses.

The issue of dual control dividing the assessing power of the states and the Centre has been one of the key points of contention, threatening to delay the government's April 1, 2017, target roll out date.

There has been no consensus on the issue in the past meetings, with Jaitley repeatedly assuring the public that the government was doing everything in its power to meet the target implementation date.

On Tuesday, the Day 1 of the meeting, the GST Council which comprises of the finance ministers of all the states, discussed issues related to Integrated GST (IGST) and demanded taxation rights for sales up to 12 nautical miles in the high sea. The states also demanded for an increase in the number of items on which cess is to be levied to compensate the states.

Pre-demonetization, a GST compensation fund with a corpus of Rs 55,000 crore was to be set up to compensate the states but after the government's move to delegalise high-denomination notes, this amount is likely to go up to Rs 90,000 crore.