The Goods and Services Tax (GST) was a milestone in India’s taxation history. The country tax system had involved myriad multiples of taxes and tax collection from state to state. In essence, therefore, India was a country of varied markets whose entrances and exits were as complex as those of Ali Baba’s fabled cave in the Arabian Nights. The challenge confronting the government in New Delhi was to draw up a uniform tax system that would be fit for purpose for an integrated single market, cutting out the confusions of the past and contributing hugely to the ease of doing business in India.
The eagerly awaited Goods and Services Tax that came into operation in the middle of 2017 was the result of much thought and practical endeavour. There were critics aplenty, naysayers who predicted gloom and doom. There were the initial glitches that required fine-tuning, which were taken in hand and properly addressed. A year on and the product has started to sparkle.
Revenue from the Goods and Services Tax is now expected to exceed Rs 1.1 lakh crore.A buoyantly optimistic Finance Minister Piyush Goyal calculates that this indirect tax collection at the end of the financial year (ending March 31, 2019) will exceed Rs 1.3 lakh crore [a lakh is 100,000; a crore 100 million]
He went on to say that there was further scope for rationalization of the tax rates if tax compliance improved. And the e-waybill system stabilized. ‘The more people get into the honest and transparent system, and with the with success of the e-waybill system, we will be in a better position to rationalize tax slabs. The different rate slabs were kept after considering social structures of the nation. Is it proper to tax luxury cars and items of common use by poor people?’
‘I worked out a formula that petroleum products would be included in the amendment providing the GST, but the (GST) Council can decide the date from which to bring them into the GST,’ said Arun Jaitley, who piloted the GST legislation through Parliament ass Finance Minister. The previous government of Manmohan Singh had excluded petroleum products from the GST.
A survey of more than 200 businesses on the first year of the GST reveals that 83 per cent of the respondents saw the new indirect tax regime as a step in the right direction and 65 per cent were satisfied by its overall implementation despite teething problems.
According to a Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) report on the transition to GST, its implementation had to improved efficiency for businesses by reducing transportations time across states because of the absence of toll barriers.
Significantly, one-third of the respondents witnessed a decline in in wholesale prices of their products, whereas 30 per cent witnessed a fall in the retail prices of their goods, amid concerns that the tax regime lead to a spike in inflation. GST has had a moderating impact on retail price inflation, which otherwise might have risen to higher levels without the new tax regime, according to CIII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee.
Summing up, to two respected international taxation experts, Jo Bello, with inputs from Anita Rastogi, writes, ‘Inevitably India has seen more changes at the stage of GST implementation than in its seeding. GST was a major tax transformation and a change of this magnitude would require time for it to be aligned to the ideal principles of consumption. The good news is that India is moving in the right direction .The GST Council is considering the option of introducing simplified tax returns and, to bring in certainty, frequent clarifications are being issued to its control board…India has implemented a dual GST with states and central governments levying a tax simultaneously levying a tax on the supply of goods and services. Not only businesses but also tax authorities around the world are watching to see how the Indian system works, and whether they can do something similar in their jurisdiction. ‘
Jo Bello concludes: ‘ I am personally astounded by what India has managed to achieve, and the quickness in implementing the changes in the GST system. This has happened nowhere earlier.’ Enough said.
Trump-Putin Summit: Fallout for India
US President Donald Trump is a man who loves springing surprises and wrong footing critics at home and abroad. His running war with sections of the mainstream US media shows little sign of abating anytime soon. They stand on shaky ground having, for the most part, gone along with President George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam Hussain’s Iraq was in possession of ‘weapons of mass destruction ’ – a diabolical falsehood it turned out to be.
President Trump changed his bellicose script on North Korea as peacemaker; his tariff wars against Canada, the European Union and China, are hugely disruptive, as is the Administration’s repudiation of the Iran nuclear deal.
The Helsinki Summit with President Putin has enraged America’s cold war Liberal consensus and elements within the British establishment. .
President Trump’s accusations of fake news generated by such paladins of the free world as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN TV and their ilk have struck a chord with increasing numbers of the American public.
What message does the Summit carry for India-US ties, and what can be the likely fallout, if any, on India’s ties with Russia and China? The perception of certain Indian scribes of India’s supposedly equidistant, pole position between the two military superpowers is the characteristic feature of the partially sighted..
Is India a member of NATO, has it ever been a participant in U S sponsored SEATO and CENTO pacts? Was India a member of the American-led coalition of the willing that invaded Iraq and Libya? The fanciful logic that the Trump-Putin dialogue will somehow pressurize China to dilute its India policies is patent absurdity. The US-Russia Summit is an exploratory exercise well worth the time between the world’s two military superpowers. That said, why should Moscow trade its secure relationship with China for speculative gains from an unpredictable US administration?Recycled trash is unlikely in this instance to improve a toxic environment.
American democracy has never been an impediment in fostering dictatorships around the world, including jihadi Pakistan. The US aligned actively with Pakistan and China during their standoff with India over the establishment of a sovereign Bangladesh in 1971. The US maintained a high-tech sanctions regime against India until the George W. Bush presidency annulled itfor a nuclear power deal. Indo-US ties today are better than they have ever been; they cooperate on many fronts without being allies. India is not a primary American interest, as Henry Kissinger pointed out his book, Global Order. The Trump Administration was studiedly neutral during the Sino-Indian Dokhlam confrontation at the tri-junction of Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan
The Soviet Union stood by India in its darkest hours, most notably in 1971 against American and Chinese heft. The Russian Federation and India bond in their ‘privileged strategic partnership’. India’s defence acquisitions from Russia, wrote strategic analyst, Brahma Chellaney, have been (continues to be) critical to India’s security. India is the fulcrum of Eurasia, Russia its heartland. Both powers are in close accord on the principal issues of international politics.
Hindi, Sanskrit scholar bids farewell to academe
Philip Lutgendorf who has graced Indian cultural studies over the past three decades and more in the United States, bade farewell as Professor at the University of Iowa. He first visited India in 1971 and fell in love with the country and its culture, becoming a respected authority in Hindi and Sanskrit literature, such as the Ramayana of Tulsi Das ert al. Becoming a tea addict on his north Indian travels, he penned an acclaimed work on the subject entitled Chai. Professor Lutgendorf was no stuffy, book-worming academic but a true scholar open to the world and what it had to offer, and hence was drawn to Hindi cinema, usually spurned at the time by the Indian middle class as trashy imitation of Hollywood. Having seen Sholay, he immediately recognized its class and quality and hailed it as a classic.
Relating the story of his life to a scribe, Professor Lutgendorf recalled: “India was the most different place I had ever been to, yet I felt oddly at home.’
