Four Years of Goods and Services Tax in India: Road Ahead

The ideology behind GST was to reduce the multiplicity of existing indirect taxes and implement a uniform taxation structure across the nation. A perfect GST would have been wherein the GSTs are taxed at a single tax rate, subject to minimal or no exceptions. However, for a country like India, a tiered tax rate structure becomes inevitable to take into account the larger social agenda. GST is in the interest of trade and industry as it would do away with multiplicity of taxes and their cascading impacts. It will lead to the creation of a unified market for facilitating seamless movement of goods across the states. By subsuming a large number of Central and State taxes into a single tax, it would mitigate cascading effects or double taxation in a major way and pave the way for a national common market. However, we need to keep in mind that taxation policy has to be transparent, predictable and inclusive. This alone can maximise the favourable impact of GST on investment and growth. There is a strong case for phasing out a lot of exemptions. The GST council should seriously work on strengthening the GST system.