GST Launched: Vehicle Entry Toll to Continue on State Borders, Says Centre

Clarifying on the unified pan-India GST that has set states dismantling their check posts, the central government said on Tuesday that vehicle entry and toll would continue to be levied on the state borders. “Toll, mandi charges, the fee on vehicle entry into states to continue but there will be no levy of any entry tax on goods movement,” Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia told reporters here following the first meeting here of the Cabinet Secretary-headed Central Monitoring Committee on the GST.

The Union Finance Ministry on Monday announced that 22 states had already demolished their border tax check posts, while eight others are in the process of doing so. “With the roll-out of the GST, 22 states in India have abolished their check posts,” a Finance Ministry release here said. Among these are Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal.

States, where border check posts are in the process of being dismantled, are Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura and Punjab, the statement added. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) that came into effect pan-India, except in Jammu and Kashmir, from July 1, replaced the earlier myriad central and state taxes with a single national tax making the movement of goods much simpler across the country.

At the state level, the taxes that GST subsumes include state cesses and surcharges, luxury tax, state VAT, purchase tax, central sales tax, taxes on advertisements, entertainment tax, all forms of entry tax, and taxes on lotteries and betting. Central taxes replaced by the GST are service tax, special additional customs duties (SAD), additional Excise duties on goods of special importance, central excise, additional customs duties, excise on medicinal and toilet preparations), additional excise duties on textiles and textile products, and cesses and surcharges.

Adhia informed the media that the CMC formed by the Cabinet Secretary includes the Secretaries of 15 departments of the government which have been instructed to attend to the issues faced by their individual client groups on account of the Goods and Services Tax that came into effect pan-India from July 1. The CMC will meet once a week on every Tuesday, he added.