Dear Editor,
The passage of the much-awaited Constitutional Amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha to usher in the goods and services tax (GST) is undoubtedly a watershed moment in the history of Independent India . That the ruling dispensation and the Opposition displayed a politics of bipartisanship towards the passage of the Bill, keeping all their narrow political interests at bay, is heartening. The Union government may have set April 2017 as the deadline to roll out the GST across the country, but given the hurdles, it seems like it may take much longer. While the GST offers many advantages to the economy and to the people – more jobs, high economic growth, higher tax collection with less tax evasion, and ease of doing business, we can’t forget that the GST is an indirect tax, which by nature is regressive and affects the poor, perpetuating income inequality if the tax rate is not capped. In this context, the demand for capping the GST tax rate at 18 per cent merits serious consideration.
M. Jeyaram, Sholavandan
Via-e-mail