Question

The concurrent power to impose tax has been provided under:

• A. Article 246
• B. List III of Schedule VII
• C. Article 307
• D. Article 246 A

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

The Correct Option is (D): Article 246 A

Answer 2

The question asks which provision of the Constitution created a genuine shared power for both Parliament and the states to impose the same tax.

1. Article 246: this is the general provision distributing legislative power among the Union, State and Concurrent Lists in the Seventh Schedule, giving Parliament exclusive power over List I, State Legislatures exclusive power over List II, and both over List III. It does not itself grant any specific concurrent power to levy a particular tax; it is only the general distributing article.
2. List III of Schedule VII: the Concurrent List historically excludes tax entries, since the original constitutional scheme kept taxing powers mutually exclusive between the Union List (entries 82 to 92B) and the State List (entries 45 to 63), with the only shared item being stamp duty rates. There is no general concurrent taxing entry in List III, so this cannot be the source of a shared power to impose GST.
3. Article 307: deals with the appointment of an authority for carrying out the purposes of Articles 301 to 304 relating to freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse across India, an entirely different subject from taxation.
4. Article 246 A: inserted by the 101st Constitutional Amendment Act, 2016, which introduced the Goods and Services Tax regime. Article 246A gives both Parliament and every State Legislature concurrent power to make laws on GST, overriding the earlier mutually exclusive scheme of Articles 246 and 254 for this one subject. This is the specific new provision that created a genuine concurrent power to tax.

Only Article 246A departs from the traditional mutually exclusive taxing scheme by expressly giving Parliament and the states a shared power over the same tax.

So the correct answer is Article 246 A.