Petrol, realty may come under GST: Sushil Modi

New Delhi: The all-powerful GST Council will consider bringing electricity, petroleum products and some other items under the ambit of GST in future, Bihar Finance Minister Sushil Modi said here. "Electricity, real estate, stamp duty and petroleum products should become part of GST (Goods and Services Tax).

This would be our (GST Council) endeavour," he said at the annual meet of industry chamber Ficci. He, however, said it would be difficult to specify any timeline for this to happen. Inclusion of these can happen without amending the Constitution, he said.

If petroleum products are brought under the GST regime, he said, it will attract the highest tax slab prevalent at that time and states would be at liberty to levy cess on it in order to protect their revenues. Both states and the Centre earn 40 per cent of their revenue from petroleum products at present.

Modi also hinted at the reduction of tax slabs going forward after tax collection stabilises. The current GST regime has five tax slabs - 0 per cent, 5 per cent, 12 per cent, 18 per cent and 28 per cent. An additional GST cess is also levied on certain products.

Although the final decision would be taken by the Council, he said, "The possible scenario could be that the current highest tax slab of 28 per cent could be brought down to 25 per cent and two tax slabs of 12 per cent and 18 per cent could be merged into one." Modi, who heads the group of state finance ministers, said that GST Network is the backbone of the GST regime.

Defending Infosys which has designed the architecture and responsible for running GST backend, he said, "I can say with confidence that we have hired the best company for this."

Recently, Infosys came under lot of criticism for frequent failure of the network leading to extension of deadlines for returns on several occasions.