Summary:
Chennai, Sep 17 (PTI): Tamil Nadu on Friday opposed the idea of bringing fuels under the goods and services tax (GST) by saying the petrol and diesel remain one of the last vestiges of a State"s right to manage its own revenue, according to Finance Minister of the State P T Palanivel Thiaga Rajan.
Addressing the GST Council led by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Rajan raised concerns that the Centre has been increasing tax on petrol and diesel between 500 per cent and 1,000 per cent since 2014.
"We are of the general opinion that the State taxation of petrol and diesel remains one of the last vestiges of any State"s right to manage their own revenues, since the advent of GST stripped away most of the small range of rights originally written to the Constitution.
We are reluctant to give up any of these few remaining rights and so are fundamentally opposed to bringing these products into the ambit of GST," Rajan said.
The Union government, changing the mix of taxation from over 90 per cent excise and less than 10 per cent cess and surcharge to about four per cent of total Union taxation of these products as excise today, have deprived the States of huge amounts of revenue while increasing the Centre"s revenue from the products by trillions of rupees (lakhs of crores) annually, he said.
"Under these circumstances, we feel it will be a grave, potentially fatal, injustice to shift State taxation of petrol and diesel away from levels determined solely by each State to the ambit of GST," he said.