8.1. Goods and Services Tax (GST)

GST has been implemented from 1st July, 2017 following 101st Constitutional Amendment Act. GST is a single tax on the supply of goods and services, right from the manufacturer to the consumer. It is essentially a tax only on value addition at each stage as input taxes credit paid at each stage will be available in the next stage of value addition. In this taxation system, the final consumer will bear only the GST charged by the last dealer in the supply chain, thus eliminating the cascading effects present in earlier tax regime.

GST is an indirect tax for the whole nation subsuming all other indirect taxes and making India ‘One Country, One Tax, One Unified Common Market’. Currently, GST has a four-slab structure:

♤ 5% (on basic necessities), 12%, 18%; and

♤ 28% (on luxury goods)