Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) organized a roundtable discussion for the benefit of the visiting delegation of India’s empowered committee on taxation Thursday, September 13 with experts and decision makers in the field of public finance and taxation. The committee was in Canada mid-September to study and understand the Canadian experience in implementing the goods and services tax.
Sushil Kumar Modi, Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar, led the delegation that included finance and taxation ministers from eight states and officers from 15 states. Among the ministers were Dr. A.K. Walia, Delhi’s Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Revenue, Urban Development and Irrigation and Flood Control; Kiran Choudhry, Haryana’s Minister of Excise and Taxation; A.R. Rather, Jammu & Kashmir’s Minister for Finance and Ladakh Affairs; Raghavji, Madhya Pradesh’s Minister for Finance & Commercial Tax; Pu Zodintluanga, Mizoram’s Minister for Taxation; Prasanna Acharya, Odisha’s Minister for Finance & Public Enterprises; and Parminder Singh Dhindsa, Punjab’s Minister for Finance.
The Canadian representation at the roundtable was by John Wilkinson, Former Ontario minister for Revenue; Brian Wurts, Harmonized Sales Tax Consultant; David Peterson, Partner, Ernst & Young; Mary Ann McMahon, Senior Manager, Ernst & Young; and Raj Saxena, Senior Manager, Ernst & Young.
In 2000, the Indian Ministry of Finance constituted the empowered committee of state finance ministers for introducing reforms in state level taxes. The committee was in Canada because India shares the same model of government with Canada. The committee’s main agenda in Canada was to study the complexity of inter-state trade, the mechanism for taxing it and also to study the implementation of GST. In addition it wanted to understand the GST model followed in Canada with various intricacies that were involved in its implementation.
Addressing the roundtable, Naval Bajaj, President, ICCC, emphasised that tax reforms are a perennial necessity in any economy. “Over time, business processes evolve, and tax instruments have to stay in consonance with these changes,” he said. Bajaj said the Ontario experience of moving over to harmonized sales tax had found support from the business community because it eliminated the cascading input taxes, and minimized duplicate compliance burden for federal and provincial taxes.
Preeti Saran, Consul General of India in Toronto, also spoke on the occasion.
The interaction between the Indian delegation and the Canadian experts touched upon several aspects of the Canadian experience, with the experts’ panel providing a historical perspective and delineating the issues that had to be resolved both by the federal government and the provinces before implementing tax reforms.
Among the topics covered included the formation of the Canada Revenue Agency, a federal entity outside the government; the structure of revenue sharing; the process of interprovincial raising of taxes; the benefits of a simplified ‘one-tax’ regime for businesses; the political sensitivity over the ushering in of new tax reforms among the constituents; and several related issues.
The Indian delegation expressed satisfaction over the interaction because the experts’ panel was able to address many of the issues that they had check-listed for the discussion. Following the roundtable, several ministers from India continued with the discussion with the panelists.
