As fuel prices have surged in the recent past, so has the talk around bringing petrol and diesel under the ambit of goods and services tax (GST).
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently told the Press Trust of India: “Whenever the GST Council decides to take up this issue, they are well within their interest to take it up and discuss. It’s a call that the Council has to take.”
The general impression among people seems to be that bringing petrol and diesel under GST will bring down their retail price. But is that possible? The central government currently earns an excise duty of ₹32.90 per litre of petrol sold and ₹31.80 per litre of diesel sold, respectively.
