Coping With GST

Start-ups are facing challenges even as they work towards being compliant with the GST regime, finds out Anagh Pal.

- Anagh Pal

Ask any start-up founder regarding the toughest challenge faced by them and chances are many of them would rate taxation any day over funding for their business. Indian businesses have been plagued with several taxes—central excise, Octroi, value-added tax (VAT), service tax and so on. All of these amalgamated into a single tax with the advent of a single Goods and Services Tax (GST) from July 1, 2017. As much as the shift has been lauded, it has also meant a change in the way one has been working.

For start-ups the change has two consequences—change their own working and also work only with those who are GST compliant and have registered for the GST. Take Shotang, the on-cloud marketplace in the business to retailer space, which sought help from EY to migrate seamlessly to the GST regime from their earlier systems. The process was tedious and it also meant that they had to help about 15,000 retailers on their platform to be GST ready. “Our representatives are still hand holding our customers and putting them at ease about this major tax reform,” says, Anish Basu Roy, co-founder, and CEO, Shotang.

Compliance matters

The GST regime has strict compliance issues, which means, one who is GST registered can practically do no business with another entity that is yet to have a GST registration. The introduction of compliance ratings which tells how compliant businesses are to GST registration is indicative of how things are panning out. Like it is true for every change, there are also startups that have benefited from this new tax structure.