GST impact on companies: Gloom and doom vanishes, India Inc at ease
Contrary to gloomy predictions, the roll-out of the goods and services tax (GST) has been a much smoother affair and the industry has adapted to it without major hassles. As FE spoke to a cross-section of the industry, several government officials and the administrative and field levels, tax experts and analysts, some things came out clearly: The gap between the country’s existing indirect tax assessee base and those registered on the GST Network has almost vanished, indicating that even large sections of small businesses that had the option of composition scheme decided to join the GST bandwagon. Grouses over the compliance burden that the new tax has imposed on small businesses are fast disappearing except for the cavils of those not wanting to report their entire transaction volume for fear of increased income tax liability. There are of course some niggling issues like how to compute the tax liability under the reverse charge mechanism but these too are getting resolved.