MUSSOORIE, MAY 11, 2013: ALTHOUGH not very high hopes were pinned on the two-day meet of the Empowered Committee being held here in the lap of Himalayas but the it seems some sort of consensus was arrived at between the States and the Centre to strive for a common list of exempted items. The States have in total 96 items on its list and the Centre has 243 items. A good number of these items have been brought under the tax net in the past two years. But, both the parties have agreed to overcome the dichotomy of retaining different lists. So, in the coming days the Centre will exempt a few more items to scale up the list to 96 items as followed by the States.

Although not much consensus has been arrived at on the issue of exemption threshold but the States had in its last meeting recommended Rs 25 lakh as a benchmark. Although the States like HP, Uttrakhand and North Eastern have protested as they fear a good number of traders would go out of their tax net, the Centre is yet to react to such a suggestion. The States are also in favour of hiking the limit of Composite Scheme for small traders. It has been suggested that such a limit should be jacked up to Rs one crore from the proposed Rs 60 lakh. Since the transaction costs or the compliance costs of such traders would go up, a higher limit may reduce the avoidable administrative burden on the tax machineries.

Dual control of small traders is another concern of the States. And that is why they have suggested that all such taxpayers whose turnover is of less than Rs 1 Crore should be spared from the clutches of dual control.

While addressing the newspersons the EC Chairman, Mr Sushil Modi, indicated that no time-line can be fixed for the implementation of GST as the polls are round the corner, and it would be difficult for any Government to do so.