GST: 1 Nation Market Tax

A leap to Free India from the shackles of 29 different tax regimes

- Dr. Jyotsna Joshi

Year 1947. One man. And a fragmented land mass of 565 princely states.

India was made one nation by Sardar Patel who unified 565 princely states into One Nation; that was one historical step and in 2016 we are going to witness the another. Soon the whole country will be brought under a single market by unifying multiple taxes under the flabbergasting GST…commonly known as Goods and Service Tax.

The GST formulation has taken place due to some significant reasons. Somebody well said that an ill- conceived tax policy does more harm to the economy than under-taxation which gives birth to tax evasion.

In India, we have labyrinth of taxes at the Central and State Level. Cascading taxes are turnover taxes which are applied at every stage in the supply chain, without any deduction for the tax paid at earlier stages. These taxes keep on raising the price of the product by inflating the selling price in the hands of the consumer. We can say that the current system of multifaceted indirect taxation is a cesspool of erroneous policy, which can be sabotaged by GST.

At present, apart from the central excise duty or service tax, the number of taxes that we pay are levied at multiple points on every product or service — be it VAT/ sales tax, octroi, luxury tax that leaves us struggling to save our pockets. The GST will help to replace a bevy of state and federal taxes, duties, surcharges and cesses into a single tax on goods and services.

The current market scenario