100 DAYS OF GST

     

Today 10th October marked 100 days of Goods and Services Tax (GST) in India. The transition was fairly smooth with a few exceptions and some industry getting hit hard, while changes like this is bound to bring disruption but the long term benefit might overshadow short term hassles.

       The GST has brought a whole lot of changes in the Indian Society where a lot of people are non-tax compliant. But this has changed ever since GST is implemented. People are now trying to bring their business under tax compliance and this has resulted in a huge increase in Income Tax Return this year, where the growth rate of Income Tax Return this year is 24.7% compared to 9.9% in the previous year. As on 05.08.2017, 2.82 crore people filed Income Tax Return as against 2.26 crore previous year. There has been a huge crackdown on black money too, the IT department has detected unaccounted income of Rs. 9334 crore as on 28.02.2017.

       The primary aim of the Government, by implementing GST, was to widen the tax base and bring more and more people under tax bracket. In the 100 days of GST, this objective of the Central Government seemed to be fulfiled to a good extent. With the increase in tax base, the Government's revenue also seem to improve in the days to come. Although 40% people have filled nil return in the first month, as businesses were hit hard in the initial days, the revenue is expected to up as things are getting settled now. Everyday many people are registering under GST and so return and revenue both will go up in days to come. 

   Demonetisation on 8th November 2016, then "Operation Clean Money" and then the implementation of GST on 1st July 2017 has changed the look of Indian economy completely. India has now become a better place to do business. People are getting tax compliant and the IT department too is carrying out huge crackdown on black money which is forcing more people to come under tax bracket and is discouraging people to earn black money. 

    Things are getting digitalised and almost 99% of tax queries are now addressed online. People need to understand that such huge change in taxation system will create disruption. Everyone should adjust themselves to the new system instead of complaining. The Government is trying to reduce the stress of common man but such widespread change needs time to get settled and used to.