INDIA BECOMES GST COUNTRY – JUST SMILE AND WAVE

By Ruma Dubey

Welcome to GST regime. India is now a GST country, starting from today!!!

This is a momentous occasion and inaugurated with a lot of drama and aplomb in the Parliament at the stroke of midnight, reminding one of Jawaharlal’s “tryst with destiny.” The Parliament building was decked up like a new bride tonight for this historic event; making it seem almost like a throwback to the Independence era time.

It has been an arduous 14 years long journe; but finally it has become a reality. In a country where we are not able to bring about change in mind sets, this is a huge thing. As the President rightly said, this is not about one Govt bringing in GST; it has been a collective effort but full marks to the BJP for not cowing down to pressure and resorting to the usual ploy of postponing. Sticking to the deadline while all cried that they were not prepared, it’s a good thing that GST was ushered.  Doing away with multiple taxes, each state having its own tax rates, at least all that clutter is out now.

Yes, there are bound to be glitches as this is a huge change the country is going to experience. But it will be worth it in the long run – that’s the mind set we all need to have. To do away with taxes which seemed so outdated in today’s time, getting over multiple taxes, this is a good thing to have happened.

PM Modi is well known for his mnemonics and for GST, he today called it “Good, Simple, tax.” Well, it will need a lot of convincing to believe that GST is simple or good – we need to actually start experiencing it to feel what the PM is saying.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, “old India was economically fragmented, but the "new India" that GST will create will give birth to a single market for the nation.”

The main objective of GST, apart from ‘one nation – one tax,’ is aimed at curbing inflation, making it difficult to evade taxes and also boosting GDP. Sounds too good to be true but only time will tell; we need to give anything new a chance to see if it works or not.

Another new thing which happened tonight - the Central Board of Excise and Customs building in the Churchgate area of Mumbai was rechristened as the ‘GST Bhavan.’ Yes, we in Mumbai will continue to call it ‘Excise building’ only!

As we said earlier, there will be challenges but it will take around two years for things to settle down and GST to really get rationalized and simplified. Currently, what we have is very complex multiple tax regime under GST – there are four tax slabs; thus it is wrong it call one nation, one tax. It will take a while for all the creases, trouble spots to be eased out. Many of the things which we bought till yesterday will become expensive from today and some will get cheaper; but no one yet knows the full impact.

The hard truth today is that despite all the allegations and counter allegations, uncertainties over impact of GST, the new indirect tax regime is a reality. Pushed back seven years from the original deadline of 1^st April 2010, it has finally happened.

Like many things in life, GST is not simple and as the days go, the mystery over the impact of GST will unravel.