GST – A game-changer for India
The 122nd Amendment to the Constitution will go down in India’s
political-economic history as a watershed, as it is about to give the
country the most progressive tax reforms till date in the form of Goods
and Services Tax (GST) which should make life easier for the trade and
industry and more importantly reduce the cost of goods and services for
the consumer, without compromising on the revenues of either the Centre
or the States. In fact, the GST should lead to a tax buoyancy and push
to the Gross Domestic Product between 1-1.5 per cent with clearance of
the cob web of taxes.The excitement among the industry, trade and
investors is justified. By a single measure, India would move up the
World Bank ranking of ease of doing business by several notches. It is
true the GST Bill has been pending for over a decade but the fact that
the NDA Government has been able to build a wide political consensus on,
what has been the most contentious issue, has conveyed a huge positive
signal to the rest of the world that India enjoys a broad political
support for the economic reforms, crucial for over a billion people.What is GST?It
is a plethora indirect taxes which contribute to bulk of revenues of
the states and just about half of the tax kitty of about Rs 16 lakh
crore of the Central Government. While direct taxes like the personal
income tax concern a small fraction of the population, the indirect
taxes affect every Indian. Since the indirect taxes are on consumption ,
rich and poor , both have to pay the same amount.Presently, the
Constitution gives mandate to the Centre and the States to levy indirect
taxes ranging from excise duty, customs, service tax. Valued Added Tax
or sales tax, entertainment tax, octroi, entry tax, purchase tax, luxury
tax and different surcharges. Both the Centre and the States have their
own official machineries to collect these taxes. But for Central excise
and VAT, most of the taxes get calculated on a base which itself has
been subjected to taxation at some or the other stage of manufacturing
value chain. So, it is a tax on tax making goods and services rather
expensive for the ultimate consumer while making life hard for the trade
and industry. The most visible example of inefficiencies of the system
can be seen at inter-state borders with long queues of trucks being
subjected to different kind of tax inspection and payment of octroi and
entry tax, blocking traffic on the highways for hours together.With the
roll out of the GST, expected from April 1, 2017, all these taxes would
be subsumed into a single tax for the consumer. The Centre would levy
and collect Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST), and States would levy
and collect the State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) on all transactions
within a State. The input tax credit of CGST would be available for
discharging the CGST liability on the output at each stage. Similarly,
the credit of SGST paid on inputs would be allowed for paying the SGST
on output. Services and goods would be subjected to taxes only on value
addition at each stage, thus bringing down the overall tax burden for
the consumers.From manufacturing to destinationAs
against the present system where the taxes like excise and Central
sales tax are levied on manufacturing at the factory gate or on
inter-state movement of goods, the GST involves taxation at the destination
level. This could mean gains for the consuming state and loss for the
manufacturing state. This is why the state with a good manufacturing
base like Tamil Nadu was opposed to the GST and consuming states like
Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha favoured the same. But, the GST Bill
provides for fully compensating the losses to the states for five years.
The earlier provision of additional one per cent levy for the losing
states has now been done away with.Impact on inflationAnalysts
feel that in the short term, there could be some impact on prices of
services which now attract an average service tax of around 14 per cent
only at the Central level. However, in the case of manufactured products
like automobile, the standard GST could be much lower than the combined
present effect of excise and state levies. However, in the medium to
long term, this should play out. On the whole, GST should be anti-dote
to inflation and would thus be people-friendly along with trade
/industry friendly. It would also bring in a lot of unorganized sector
of the economy within the mainstream.GST RateThere
would be about three rates – Standard rate in the form of X which will
cover bulk of the items , X-minus for the items of mass consumption and
X-plus for the luxury goods or the so-called “sin goods’’. In the
Constitutional Amendment, there is no mention of the GST rates, which
would be decided by the GST Council comprising of Union Finance Minister
as the Chairman and Finance ministers of the states. Any decision of
the GST Council would require three-fourth approval of the Council. The
states would have two –third of the voting powers and the Centre
one-third. The Congress Party has demanded a ceiling of 18 per cent on
GST standard rate while the government is called upon to ensure the
revenue neutral rate (RNR). Any major deviation from RNR could be
counter-productive either for inflation or for fiscal prudence. Getting
the right RNR both for the Centre and the states would be a major
challenge.Left outPetroleum products and
alcoholic beverages have been left out of the GST, for now, on concerns
of the states which feared these major revenue heads could not be
bargained for. For the sake of wider political consensus, these heads
have been left for the future reforms. What Next?After
approval of Parliament, the GST Bill would go for ratification by at
least half the states. The process is expected to be completed very
soon. Afterwards, Parliament will have to again pass two enabling bills –
one for the Central GST and the other for the Integrated GST. Besides,
the state legislatures will have to pass the enabling law of State GST.
In the meantime, work on the central IT backbone being prepared by a
non-profit organisation is being done on a war-footing for the possible
roll out from the next financial year.