Relieve GST of its warps to regain its reform cred

The great tax simplifier has not met its promise so far. GST has spurred formalization and scored its 'one market' goal, but it awaits a major reset to prove itself historic as a reform

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In 2017, at the stroke of the midnight hour, India was set to awaken to the light of a tax reform so bold that its 1 July launch was mounted on a freedom-marker scale in Parliament. How our Goods and Services Tax has fared since, however, makes the heraldic contrast with 1947 look worse than the concept of GST merits. And to the extent that India’s tryst with destiny rides on our economic emergence, we cannot afford to take GST’s potential gap lightly. In terms of jurisdiction, by unifying the country into a single market—a plus for investors and the pitch of its hard-sell—it achieved a basic aim. Given the constraints of politics, this part was admirably hard-won. Today, with its monthly mop-up above ₹1.5 trillion, a fiscal anxiety over GST revenue has begun to ease at last; this buoyancy could relieve state coffers of their need for cess top-ups. By acting a slice-off of value addition instead of sale prices, its design got informal units to sign up—drawn by input credits and pushed by business clients. Much of its switchover pain is now in the past, as technical glitches an