A Case For And Against GST

GST HAS GENERALLY been acknowledged as being an ideal tax system, which has been implemented in a large number of countries and brought several benefits.

- Madan Sabnavis

India, too, embarked on this tax system post demonetization, which raised the emotive cord as one major constituency -- the SMEs -- was impacted by this new tax regime. The government has been fine-tuning the system regularly both in terms of changing the tax rates on various goods and services and also making it easier for the SMEs.

However, when one reads Arun Kumar’s book on the subject, the impression derived is that the GST is an incorrect concept for a complex country. The argument that GST is there everywhere in the world cannot be just because countries have adopted this concept to their underlying conditions, which the author feels has not been done in India. While Kumar, an erudite scholar, an economist, has written earlier extensively on black money and demonetization where he convincingly argues that the government was off track, the same cannot be said in this context. Some of his conclusions may be perceived as premature as the system is still evolving, and this has been accepted by the government.