The Goa Assembly on Wednesday ratified the Goods and Services Tax Constitution Amendment Bill, becoming the 15th state to do so, reported PTI. After this, the President can now notify the GST Council to implement the uniform tax regime across the nation.

During the session, all members of the House unanimously voted to pass the resolution. Goa is ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which holds 21 out of the 40 seats in the Assembly. Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar called it a historic moment. Parsekar also allayed fears among Opposition MLAs and said the Centre had promised to compensate the state for five years if there was any loss in revenue during implementation of GST.

The chief minister said the state never really benefited from service tax and claimed that it will now earn at least Rs 1,000 crore from service tax. He explained, “There are many manufacturing industries in the state. But their corporate offices are in other states due to which those states were benefiting. The GST has provisioned that at least 50% of the service tax from the industries should come to Goa.”

The GST Bill seeks to bring in a single tax rate to replace India's complicated current rules, which include Central excise duty, service tax, additional customs duties, value added tax, entertainment tax and so on. It will replace 17 indirect tax levies. The Bill was cleared by both houses of Parliament on August 3.