Nagpur: Implementing Goods and Services Tax (GST) will transform India into a common market will eliminate inefficient tax cascading effect. It will go a long way in boosting the manufacturing sector. With economic reforms gaining momentum, long-term prospects for growth remain bright for India. India needs to continue making progress on its domestic reforms agenda and encourage investments. The government efforts at improving the performance of the manufacturing sector will lead to more jobs for young Indians.
Though trading community welcomes and genuinely supports the introduction of GST in India, it is unfortunate that till date government has not made any efforts to discuss the proposed model of GST with any stakeholders.
Traders are the most integral part of tax collection system and will play a pivotal role in the success of GST Traders role is to collect tax and deposit the same with government treasury. Hence they should be treated as partner and should be declared as Tax Collectors.
Government must bring out the proposed model of GST in public and invite opinions of various stakeholders and general public before imposing it on country.
Implementation of GST will require massive change in existing legislation, policy implementation, and understanding of tax policy, tax infrastructure, and e-governance system.
GST if implemented in haste, will become counterproductive and instead of doing any good will do more harms to Indian Economy.
Through The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty Second Amendment) Bill, 2014, it is clear that Government of India may opt for Dual GST which means, there will be both Central GST and State GST along with Integrated Goods & Services Tax on inter-State transactions of Goods & Services.
Since the larger objective of GST is to simplify tax collection with minimum administrative interference on day to day business operations along with simplified paper work, the Dual GST will lead to overhead for traders as they need to satisfy two tax bodies, one central and another state. The best part of GST will be that it will subsume local taxes like Octroi & LBT.
… By B.C.Bhartia
