GST 100 Days: Have Delays, Deferrals And Constant Changes Negated The Benefits Of GST?
What can we infer from the 100 days of Goods and Services Tax implementation?
In the 100 days since Goods and Services Tax was implemented, the government has changed rates for 27 items, taking the total number of rate changes to over 100. It has deferred filing deadlines twice, raised the compensation scheme threshold twice, offered interim relief to exporters and indicated an average monthly tax collection of about Rs 92,000 crore.
All this suggests either an ill-prepared GST implementation or a flexible GST Council and a government seeking to correct anomalies.
Speaking to BloombergQuint, VS Parthasarathy, chief financial officer of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. said while big businesses have been relatively unaffected, it is the small and medium enterprises that have been the worst hit.
Teething problems with a reform of this magnitude were always anticipated, said Harishanker Subramaniam, national leader of indirect taxes at Ernst & Young. For him, the bigger problem is the government’s constant tinkering of the rates.
Watch the discussion here