Ahead of a meeting of the goods and services tax (GST) council on Saturday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and his predecessor, P. Chidambaram, were engaged in a Twitter war. “When the Congress President said — as I have said — GST should be a single rate, it means that the standard rate of GST should be a single rate. As Dr Arvind Subramanian’s RNR [Revenue Neutral Rate] report pointed out, when there is a standard rate there will also be a standard-minus rate and a standard-plus rate. “The stupid idea was the BJP’s idea of having 8 rates when GST was first implemented in July 2017!” he added. The Finance Minister on Thursday had tweeted, “A single slab GST argued by the Congress President is indeed a stupid idea.

Source: The Hindu December 21, 2018 16:52 UTC