Mother of all taxes - GST, a biggest reform in Indian tax system

Goods and Services Tax or GST known as the biggest game changer for the Indian economy. Almost 160 countries have implemented GST so far. However, the thought of GST in India was rooted way back by Vajpayee government in 2000. The Finance Minister in his budget speech of Budget 2015 has announced time and again that the tax will be introduced on 1 April, 2016, however it came into existence in the year 2017 on 1st July.. VAT or Value Added Tax was first introduced in France somewhere in 1954. The concept of VAT is applying a tax only on the value added by each person at each stage; by allowing the person input credit of taxes paid up to his stage of procurement. Thus the tax is expected to increase the gross domestic product of the economy, reduce the concept of ‘tax on tax’ and reduce prices. Overall it is known to be beneficial to everyone, the business, consumer and the Government. In India, there are so many indirect taxes applied on goods and services by both central and state government. GST is intended to include all these taxes into one tax with seamless ITC and charged on both goods and services. Thus service tax, special additional duty, excise duty, VAT to name a few will get repealed and will be added into GST. For this, GST will have 4 parts – Central GST (CGST) Bill, Integrated GST (IGST) Bill, Union Territory GST (UTGST) Bill, the GST (Compensation to States) Bill. state taxes like VAT will be subsumed into SGST and the central taxes like excise duty into CGST. This Research Paper is focoused on 2 years journey of GST in India and its future.