GST: Goods and Service Tax. It was one of the biggest tax reform in India in last 5 decades. It was rolled out at the stroke of midnight on 1st July, 2017 and has completed 5 years on 30th June, 2022.
The motto of this biggest tax reform was One Nation, One Tax. Before GST regime, there were State wise VAT laws and Cess laws, Service Tax, Excise Duty etc. The credit of input of VAT and Cess paid was not allowed under Service Tax and vice versa. It was resulting cascading effect of double taxation due to which the cost of product and services were increased. Further, there were separate compliance under each laws. To ease the system of taxation and remove the cascading effect of double taxation, Government of India made this significant change and implemented GST.
GST subsumed 17 local levies like Excise Duty, Service Tax, VAT and 13 cesses. Since it was one of the biggest tax reform in the taxation history of India, at early stage, there were many difficulties faced by all stakeholders of GST. But gradually all the difficulties were rectified to make it seamless. Despite long hinderances, the increasing number of registered taxpayer and increase in collection of monthly GST is creating history every month. In last 5 years GST law and compliance has matured at a fast pace.
The compliance of GST is being managed by GST Network (GSTN). GSTN is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to prepare and provide newer data to the Tax Officials so that they can plug the revenue leakages. Although GST law has evolved and mitigate several issues faced by the registered taxpayers but still it has many more issues to deal with in the future like inclusion of Petrol, Diesel and ATF under GST, decrease in number of circular and notification, simplification of compliance, seamless passing of Input tax credit etc. We expect that in future the Government will consider the issues faced by the Industry and will create a transparent environment in which even a small business person should be able to comply all the requirements of GST. This will not only increase the revenue collection but also result in increase in GDP and employment scenario in India.
Very nice blog post. Keep writing dear 😃