GST biggest ever tax reform in country: Venkaiah Naidu

Hyderabad, Jan 23: Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday said that with the introduction of GST, the biggest ever tax reform taken since Independence, India was finally ‘one-country, one-market’. 

Inaugurating a National seminar on "contemporary issues and challenges in finance, market and taxation", Mr Naidu said this reform had changed the face of the indirect tax regime in the country as it imposed one tax instead of several taxes by various State Governments and the Union Government. 
In other words, it had made compliance easy for businesses and traders and will lead to further improvement in the ease of doing business in India. GST demonstrated the victory of bipartisanship in the democratic and federal set-up of India, he said.
Mr.Naidu said India’s tax-to-GDP ratio was 16.6 per cent in FY2017, which compares with 26.0 per cent in the USA, 20.1 per cent in China, and 34.3 per cent in OECD countries. India needs to significantly ramp up its tax-to-GDP ratio to fund a modern 21st century government which can offer basic public goods and social security to its citizens. 
He said direct tax collected in FY2018YTD has grown at 18.2 per cent. This increase in collection has been driven by increase in compliances with the number of taxpayers increasing for both direct and indirect taxes. 5.9 million tax-payers have registered for GST and 28.2 million people filed their income-tax returns for FY2017.
Demonetization, SIT on black money and notification of the Benami Transactions Act, 1988 were some of the strong steps taken to bring more economic activity into the tax net, even as the war on black money needs to continue unabated, Mr Naidu said. UNI