It’s already been a year since the Goods and Services Tax took effect in India. At about this time last year (2017), the entire nation was waiting for a revolution to happen. GST was all set to change the landscape of indirect taxes in India. How far have we gotten with the “One Nation – One Tax” idea? Was it a good idea? Was it a blunder?
Let’s take a look at the first anniversary of our GST – a report card of the how it fared over the last one year.
The GST replaced VAT and Service Tax and aimed to consolidate all indirect taxes into:
- CGST – Central GST
- SGST – State GST
- IGST – Integrated GST
The Good:
- Helped reduce inflation.
- Educated businesses about taxes and importance of invoices.
- Helped clean up black money.
- Reduced logistics and cross-state consumption costs.
- Brought all businesses under a single roof in terms of indirect taxes.
- More people filing tax returns.
The Bad:
- Confused businesses about the system.
- Complex filing with multiple returns.
- A faulty GST Network ridden with loopholes.
- Unorganized law implementation.
- Confusing compliance norms.
- Exports facing problems with refunds.
The Future?
- A stronger GST Network and filing platform
- Lesser returns (probably just one a month)
- A step-up for Make In India
- Petrol & Diesel to come under GST?
- Making fewer slabs.
- Getting more consumer insights and analytics.
Instamojo Take:
The GST has definitely been a revolutionary change in the way India does business, especially in the MSME segment. But big changes take time to adapt in a country with a business population of over 10 million!
We hope GST filing becomes smoother over the next year and brings in more stability to the process.
Want GST-compliant invoices for your business? Try Instamojo Invoice generator for free and forget about your GST woes!
5 comments
thank for the information
Hi Admin!
Such a nice and great blog indeed on “GST”, I’m very appreciate it!
Keep updating more stuffs like this……..
Hi Rapti, Nice post. “Confused businesses about the system.” – yes taxpayers were so much confused, but i think now its slowly coming on track and i believe, writers like you helped people to understand GST till now.
Thanks for writing such a superb article on GST.
Regards
Jayendra
This is a wonderful read. However, you can visit encomply.com to take care of all your GST-related problems. Thank you.
GST is a beautiful regime that introduced by central gov. Merits are more than demerits and disadvantages slowly be eradicated. Very much helpful to understand the changes.