A group of central and state government officials set up to frame the law for proposed goods and services tax (GST) has submitted its final draft that could be taken up at a meeting of the empowered committee of state finance ministers soon. The draft law may be made public after it's deliberated by the empowered panel headed by West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra.

In the upcoming monsoon session of Parliament, the government is expected to make a renewed push for the passage of the constitutional amendment bill to roll out GST armed with more members in the Rajya Sabha and a broad-based national support for this reform.

The constitutional amendment will merely allow for this single tax, which is not possible under the current structure of taxation. At present states are not empowered constitutionally to tax services and the central government cannot tax goods sold in retail. Empowering both the states and centre to levy this tax, the constitutional amendment will seek to change this.

Meanwhile, the government has been seeking to persuade Congress to drop its resistance to GST and help get parliamentary approvals. GST seeks to replace central and state taxes such as excise duty, service tax, value-added tax, entry tax and octroi with a single levy and create a unified national market.