GST Gets Rolling, Bumps Ahead

There’s a Lot of Hope Riding on Independent India’s Single Biggest Tax Reform. It Will Have to Overcome Many Obstacles to Hit Top Gear

- Shweta Punj & M.G. Arun

Midnight sessions of India’s Parliament are reserved to ring in events of great significance, beginning with India’s independence on August 15, 1947, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘tryst with destiny’ speech. Since then, Parliament has commemorated midnight sessions for only two other events—the golden jubilees of the Quit India movement in 1992 and of India’s independence in 1997. For the NDA to choose a special midnight session to roll out its landmark Goods & Services Tax (GST) signifies the enormous symbolism bestowed on this biggest of tax reforms. GST will free India of its archaic, multi-layered tax structure with a regime that will create a single market across the country. It will unify all the states with a single tax rate and reduce the interface with tax inspectors, setting the stage for a ‘new normal’, as Union finance minister Arun Jaitley puts it. In anticipation of the new normal are anxious traders and businessmen, who are grappling with the fine print of the new tax, the prospect of an anti-profiteering agency and an electronic system that will now rate taxpayers on how promptly they upload their invoices, pay taxes and file returns.