One Year Of GST: A Verdict From India's ACE Industry

July 2018 marked the completion of the first year of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). Touted as the biggest economic reform since Independence, it has had noteworthy impact on the nation’s business ecosystem. Electronics Bazaar reached out to a few experts in India’s appliances and consumer electronics (ACE) industry to explore how the GST has impacted their business in the last financial year, the obstacles they encountered and how our government can help domestic players rise above the existing challenges.

- Baishakhi Dutta

On July 1, 2017, the Centre launched the ‘one nation, one tax’ regime with the Goods and Services Tax (GST), taking India on a roller-coaster ride. The verdict has so far been mixed. So on the first anniversary of the GST launch, many have praised it for combining the multiple indirect taxes into a single, compact tax structure for India’s US$ 2 trillion economy. However, many others have termed the reshuffling as complex and cumbersome.

The benefits of the ‘one nation, one tax’ policy

After one year of GST, the views differ wildly on whether it has achieved what the government claims it has. What is clear, however, is that the new system has done away with the multiple taxes imposed by Central and state governments. Earlier, manufacturers had to carefully analyse the tax rates in states, in order to zero in on the most competitive investment locations. They can now base their decisions on the availability of resources and skills, instead.

Sharan Maini, director-business development at JVC India, mentions that while the journey so far has been full of glitches, the proactive approach of the GST council towards the issues that cropped up has been altering the economic landscape positively. He believes that the biggest benefit achieved by GST implementation is the elimination of multiple indirect taxes as it has brought every sector effectively under the ‘one tax’ umbrella, thus generating more revenues and reducing the total tax rates. “It’s proved beneficial to traders and the taxpayers as it has simplified the tax regime to a very basic level and is altering the economic landscape positively,” says Maini.