Goods and Services Tax (GST) in India: An overview

Abstract

Goods and Services Tax (GST) will be a transformational restructuring of Indian taxation system by developing common unified national market and reducing cascading effects of tax on goods and services. This will lead to complete overhaul of indirect tax structure in India. The main objectives of GST are to widen the tax base, harmonization and rationalization of tax rates. The GST would ensure better compliance and reduces tax evasion. But there are certain structural issues related to exempted items and tax administration required to implement such new mechanism which are not yet addressed. This paper makes an attempt to provide a background of indirect tax structure and current scenario of GST in India.