Goods and Services Tax – GST

Goods and Services Tax (GST) is a value-added indirect tax at each stage of the supply of goods and services precisely on the amount of value addition achieved. It seeks to eliminate inefficiencies in the tax system that result in ‗tax on tax‘, known as cascading of taxes. GST is a destination-based tax on consumption, as per which the state‘s share of taxes on inter-state commerce goes to the one that is home to the final consumer, rather than to the exporting state. GST has two equal components of central and state GST. France was the first country to implement the GST in 1954, and since then an estimated 160 countries have adopted this tax system in some form or another. Some of the countries with GST include Canada, Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, the U.K., Monaco, Spain, Italy, Nigeria, Brazil, and South Korea. India joined the GST group on July 1, 2017. Most countries with a GST have a single unified GST system, which means that a single tax rate is applied throughout the country. A country with a unified GST platform merges central taxes (e.g. sales tax, excise duty tax, and service tax) with state-level taxes (e.g. entertainment tax, entry tax, transfer tax, sin tax, and luxury tax) and collects them as one single tax. These countries tax virtually everything at a single rate. In this paper an attempt is made to introduce the concept of Goods and service Tax and briefly discuss the impact of GST in Indian economy .