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Will GST actually ease doing business in India


“Ease of Doing Business’’ - the only pillar of GST is keeping the business concerns eagerly waiting for its roll out. Although we are optimistic that GST would make life easy for business units in the term of unified market, competitive suppliers, removal of cascading effect, reduction of multiple taxes and so on. But the Model GST law shows the flip side of the story as well.

With business units expected to take registrations at every location from where the supply is affected, it looks like that it will bring an additional burden on them. There is no centralized registration available under GST. More so only registrations will not suffice; even the self supplies would be taxable under GST. This would certainly lead to working capital blockage. We understand that this provision has been introduced in order to maintain the credit chain and to monitor each and every supply. But to certain extent it may prove harsh for the businesses which have high gestation period.

With the introduction of GST, every taxable supplier has to file at least 37 returns in a year. This might prove to be a heavy compliance cost for small business units. Although returns are auto populated and have to filed online, but the reality is majority of business man are not educated enough to tackle the mismatch, ITC issues themselves. In such a situation an external consultant is likely to gain more. If a business unit is a supplier with an e-commerce unit, it has to compulsorily take registration under GST. No minimum exemption benefit is available to these small units. Since e-commerce giants have been able to give them some business it is likely to fade a little once GST comes in. These e-commerce units will prefer to have their own mother warehouses rather than making tie-up with small business concerns.

They say that GST will be taxpayer friendly and a huge importance is being given on trusting the taxpayer. They have even announced that only 5% of the cases will be selected for audit purposes. With around 10 audits introduced in model GST Law at various levels, it is unlikely that the life of a business unit would become easy. The concept of self assessment will just remain a concept practically. Indirect tax revenue authorities usually have a mindset that each and every taxpayer has malafide intentions. This transformation from audits to self-assessment regime requires a huge behavioral change to be introduced.

The arbitrary powers of the assessing officers at the time of assessment proceedings will prove another hitch for the business unit to accept GST in its right spirit. As per law, if the proper officer has reasons to believe that you have adopted the wrong valuation for paying GST, it can reject the same and go on with his own valuation. In such a scenario it is unlikely that corruption will go away.

Under GST, refunds of taxes paid would also not be easy. Only in two cases where there is inverted duty structure or exports, refund would be granted. In the cases where the transactions have not materialized or the customer has returned the goods, no such refund would be allowed. There could be number of transactions like return of samples, sale on approval basis, non-materialized advances etc. which would lead to accumulation of input tax credit rather accumulation of working capital which will never be refunded. In such a scenario government should ease refund rules and ensure whenever a refund application is made it should be disposed off in time bound manner like it is being done with income tax refunds.

Since GST is a digital tax regime, it is important that government should launch campaigns, make kiosks and other instruments in order to educate more and more citizens of the country. This is required with immediate effect at least in the north eastern part of the country.  Subsidies and other benefits should be granted to the training institutes for departing GST knowledge to less privileged segment of the society.

By finding out the problems and issues in GST, we by no manner disapprove that it will not be in the benefit of the business units. But there are few anomalies which the government should do away so that GST makes doing business easy in real sense.          

by:
Keshav R Garg
(B.Com, FCA, CS, ISA (ICAI))
Faculty for GST: Indirect Tax Committee of ICAI
Author: Bharat's GST Ready Reckoner
            A Handbook on GST
Adviser for GST: Industries Association of Chandigarh 
Member: Indirect Tax Committee of CII, PHDCCI, MyGst.MyTax Foundation
Address: 3328, Sector 27 D, Chandigarh, India - 160 019
Phones: +91-172-461-3328, +91-98880-90008
Mails: mygst.mytax@gmail.com, keshavgarg@kdai.in   



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