Basic Concepts and Features of Good and Service Tax in India

The word of taxation is obtained from Latin word, which is ‘taxare’ with the meaning of to estimate. Tax is not voluntary payment or donation, but it is an enforced contribution by government while we become a citizen in one country. In this life, we can find tax in toll, restaurant, supply, custom, subsidy or others name. The GST (Goods and Services Tax) in India is still not implemented yet, because there will be two types of GST that will be operating in this country, which are CGST (Central Goods and Services Tax) and SGST (State Goods and Services Tax). It happens because India is a democratic country so the government wants to remove the cascading impact of taxes on production and distribution cost of goods and services which leads to beneficial impact to the GDP growth. For instance, government do not allow free trade of alcohol and tobacco because these items bring the greatest income for the state. In addition, because there are two types of GST, every citizen shall pay the tax individually on its accounts. Other than that, India has chances to enhance their nation through the GST; such as, deleting the multiple tax; using one-point single tax to help business community; reduce the corruption, reduce the average tax burdens, reduce transaction cost and unnecessary wastages.

Furthermore, GST bring the advantages for the country itself, for example, CST will be removing so there is no input tax credit that available for CST, citizen is only need to pay a single GST instead of State and Central GST, the reducing of aggregate rate and the increasement of Indian products in international market.

Since GST has implemented in India, every housing and construction industry should be included in GST tax because this sector is a significant contributor to national economy. This is not only happened to that sector, but also happen in food industry too. Other than that, the transaction of technology also should be taxed, because it is considered as Intellectual property and regarded as a service. Similarly, financial services are also be charged in GST although most of country like New Zealand do not put the GST on these services. However, the biggest taxation in India is to boost overall growth. It is proven by the experts who say that GST is likely to improve tax collections and boost India’s economic development by breaking tax into Centre and States GST.