‘GSTN Is A Great Example Of Cooperative Federalism'

The main challenge was to bring all the states into one single tax platform.

- M Rajendran

The Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) is a dynamic and evolving system, says its chairperson Ajay Bhushan Pandey. In a discussion with M Rajendran, he speaks about the past and future challenges of the organisation.

The GSTN will be completing one year of operation this month. How has the last 12 months been for your organisation? 

The last 12 months have been very eventful and transformative for the entire country. Before GST was introduced, 35 state and union territories had their own value added tax systems. They had their own ways of filing tax returns, laws and formats. Then there were central excise and service taxes. There were 37 disparate systems that hardly spoke to each other. Imagine a country of 120 crore people with more than a crore of dealers. Now they are all being brought under one digital platform.

In the earlier system, the level of digitisation varied from state to state. Within a short span of time, all the 37 different items have been integrated into one. The entire return filing system has been made transparent and digital. It is a faceless system, where you can file digitally.

How did you prepare for this challenging task?