M A I N   N E W S

VAT in rough weather

New Delhi, March 28
The much-touted value-added tax has run into rough weather with at least half a dozen states showing their unwillingness to implement it from April 1, which could force the Centre to defer the deadline by a few months.

Though all states except Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, had given consent to get the draft VAT bills passed in their respective assemblies before the April deadline, not many have actually done it so far due to political pressure and agitations by traders.

The Centre has taken pains to explain that small traders do not come under the ambit of VAT as there is a threshold limit ranging from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 lakh of turnover. But this has not convinced them as VAT would bring evaders into the tax net increasing the incidence of tax liability. PTI