Leveraging On The GST Bandwagon

The GST has enabled single tax system which also alleviated a lot of issues faced by the logistics players, thus making the goods movement easy. Moreover, it gives you a very definite taxability structure with humungous amount of clarity.

- Renjini Liza Varghese

It is a month since the most awaited single tax system - Goods and Services Tax (GST) was put in place by India by replacing a dozen of existing taxes; the debate is still on what predictably has changed in this period. Even before the GST was launched, the analysts and sectors experts were in agreement to the fact that logistics segment would be reaping the maximum benefits.

‘Mid-Year Emerging Markets Review 2017,’ by Agility says, “The steps taken by the Indian Government will give increased momentum to the already surging Indian Economy and logistics sector. The report predicts that the GST reform in the long run is expected to increase Indian internal and external trade by 29 percent and 32 percent respectively.”

With GST as single tax, the key barriers like the CST (central sales tax) are removed. (How CST used to work is if a manufacturer is moving his finished product say from Tamil Nadu to delhi for sales, then CST is applicable. However, if the goods are moved for storage purpose to delhi, then it is excluded from CST). Tax evasions were very common. With GST all these kinds of concerns are being addressed.

For a lot of commodity driven players including cement and autos, the ‘one nation, one tax’ also alleviates a set of issues that are related to warehousing. With the definite taxability structure in place, it makes receiving of the input tax simpler, wherein for the same there were multiple things to be done earlier. Now there is a humungous amount of clarity. The movements of goods have become far easier in the GST environment.