GST: A Wave of Change after Midnight

The central government is all set to launch the country’s new Goods and Services Tax (GST) at the stroke of midnight hour today. Although the Bill is exempting daily use commodities from the levy but the new taxation system is bound to make an impact on all sorts of businesses. As GST will merge most of the existing taxes into a single taxation system, buyers will have to pay same price for goods of a similar family and innumerable industries such as e-commerce, electronics, aviation, transport services, telephone, movies, etc. will notice more transparency in the economy.

Ever since the first conversations around the introduction of GST started in India, organizations started providing offerings for the purpose of GST compliance and filing. IT companies began launching GST-enabled solutions for its customers to help them prepare for the radical change. These services are aimed to provide better understanding of the four different slabs of new tax reform. “The advent of the GST regime has the business community frantically looking for reliable solutions to handle the new rules in an appropriate and effortless manner. Since the introduction of GST began, Oracle recognised that a central taxation system in the country was the future and started working on a GST solution. We have a dedicated team of product managers, tax specialists and developers across all our product lines working on GST.” said Ajay Kumar, Director, Sales Consulting ERP, Oracle India.

GST will be rolled out from July 1. Among others, it will make a powerful impact on the electronic goods industry as well. Some products may get expensive and some will get free from many indirect taxes. Reduction of indirect taxes from smartphones will ease the overall tax process. The levy is estimated to be reduced from 13.5% to 12% for smartphones. Out of the four slabs- 5%, 12%, 18%, 28%, smartphones will be then included in the 12% tax lab. This change will help drip the prices of smartphones slightly in India. It is speculated that the government might relax the charges imposed on indigenous products. This can further help bring the costs down.

On the other hand, bills of mobile, landline, broadband and DTH services will witness surge in tax imposed on them. Earlier, these services were levied with 14.5% tax. It is now going to go up to the 18% slab after GST implementation.

One of the biggest tax reformation in the history of India , the new GST is conclusively going to impact our lives and bring in a wave of change in probably ways which we have not fathomed yet. Initially, the impact would not be easily visible but the country will manifest the impact on various industries gradually.