Gst for Telecom Needs Further Tuning

The proposed GST must ensure that the rates of taxes are low on services as well as mobile handsets in order to ensure affordability of telecom services and the highly productive ripple effect on India’s GDP.

- Bipin Sapra

The telecoms industry in India has scaled dramatically over recent years to become one of the country’s biggest success stories. It is the world’s second largest wireless market with over a billion subscribers and is set to become the second largest smartphone market, overtaking the US; with forecasted 320 million smart phone connections by 2016. Telecoms sector has revolutionized lives of people; the way very few could have imagined a decade back. The mobile phone has played a wonderful role in helping the large part of India to progress towards globalization. Communication is the essence of evolution and now that we have got people talking and staying connected, we are moving onto internet-of-things. The scope is immense and has ripple effect on gross domestic product (GDP).

Indian government recognizes the transformative potential of the sector with the development of its ‘Digital India’ initiative, which looks to empower one billion people by providing Internet access to all and to make broadband a utility for every citizen.

Martin Luther King Jr said ‘The time is always right to do the right thing’and the time is indeed right for the introduction of a landmark reform – The Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. It is clearly India’s greatest indirect tax reforms and will be marked as a milestone in India’s economic history. The 122nd Constitutional Amendment Bill passed unanimously by both the Houses of the Parliament introduces a common Goods and Service Tax or GST and marks a new dawn in the tax administrative structure of the economy. Now, it is only a matter of time before the bill is ratified by the states and is finally put for the President’s assent.