Revolutionizing Taxation: Understanding the Fundamentals of GST in Contemporary India

The Goods and Services Tax, or GST, took effect on July 1, 2017. The new tax system was designed to replace all current indirect taxes with a single, comprehensive tax. The Products and Services Tax (GST) is a consumption tax imposed on goods and services depending on their final destination (Bhushan Satya). Simply said, GST is a single tax that applies to delivering goods and services from the producer to the end user. In a nutshell, it's a tax imposed solely on value addition, with input tax credits transferred to successive stages of value addition, implying that the ultimate tax burden would fall on the end user of products or services. The anticipated advantages of implementing the GST are that it would decrease the cascading impact of taxes, i.e., it will eliminate tax on tax. It was also anticipated to stimulate demand for products and the elimination of a number of indirect taxes such as VAT, CST, Service tax, CAD, SAD, and Excise, among others, which would help to improve the Indian economy in the long term. This paper tries to highlight the costs and benefits borne by the economy due to the implementation of the GST. The paper also tries to find out the expected rate of growth of the economy after the GST. Finally, the study tries to conclude how it would be disrupted and benefit the economy in the long run.