A week into GST: Heaven for some, hell for others.
Not many sectors are happy over the new tax system. As of now, they are expressing neutral opinions though one can make out the frustration while others are openly criticizing the new regime.
According to moneycontrol.com some sectors that despised the new system even before it rolled out are textiles, jewellers, scientific apparatus makers & brick manufacturers from fly ash; variety of clothes had different tax rates earlier and yet the textiles somehow seem to be comfortable with that though now its a flat rate, gold was taxed higher earlier but now its at 3%, scientific apparatus makers are now bound to pay 18% opposed to the earlier 5.25% & the brick manufacturers are now taxed at 28% while the chimney brick manufacturers are to pay only 5%.
Sourced from Bloomberg
Sourced from Bloomberg
Sourced from Bloomberg
The main intention of the new tax system is to have a state and centralized approach (rather than having multiple taxes normally not well understood by consumers), taking the levying modes to online and essentially making India one economy facilitating interstate trading of goods easy which was otherwise a big issue in the previous tax system.
According to cleartax.in the online guide to the GST an example of post implementation scenario is shown below.
Sourced from cleartax.in
Now, although the intentions behind the transition are good and little later to the launch the whole economy went to chaos mainly because of the confusion and less understanding of the new system. The big businesses were more prepared for the transition than the medium sized and small sized ones. Some predict an inflation in the prices of the goods otherwise perceived to go low post implementation.
A lot of foreign media has been applauding the prime minster Modi for his interest in taking the nation ahead with a prediction of improvement in the internal trade by 29%, external trade by 32% and estimated increase in the nations GDP by 4.2%, a sum which is than the nations annual borrowing according to a research note at US central bank as stated in The Economic Times.
Where is all all this actually heading, we have to wait and watch!
Appreciate your attention!