Piecing it Together

Bahadurke Road, a bustling street in Ludhiana houses over 250 hosiery units and a handful of oil mills. Top Gear Fashions, a manufacturer and exporter of garments is among the bigger units housed there. Anup Jain, partner, Top Gear is happy that GST has been implemented because many unscrupulous promoters and businesses were avoiding paying taxes. GST has the mechanism to plug loopholes, he says.

But he rues the fact that government has gone easy after sending strong signals that they wanted to get tax avoiders. "In the first couple of months, everyone sent consignments with proper bills. Then they realised that the government has relaxed its vigil and are going easy. Immediately, people who are used to fraudulent ways were back with a vengeance," he says. Under invoicing says Jain is rampant and the 'cash' business is back in major wholesale markets. The kaccha bill is very much in business.

In New Delhi, Rajat Mohan, partner at chartered accounting firm, AMRG & Associates is piqued that though GST was supposed to be governed online, many processes were still happening manually. "Refunds are getting stuck because GST Network or GSTN, the custodian of the IT backbone of GST has not developed a particular utility," he says.

Meanwhile in the corridors of North Block, home to the finance ministry, while the government is boasting about growing monthly collections, officials are wary about tax buoyancy due to GST.

This pretty much sums up GST, which completed a year on June 30. The new tax regime is in place, in bits and pieces, but the soul is missing. The software and IT backbone is still struggling to cope with the enormity of processes. Tax officers in states as well as taxpayers are