Gst has a good start but communication infrastructure must work all the time

Gst has a good start but communication infrastructure must work all the time

The ongoing transition of the country’s indirect taxes, other than Customs, to a goods and services tax has so far been relatively smooth, not dismissing minor glitches. But there are a few more things the government can do to make things even simpler and prevent the kind of political backlash that has accompanied switchover to a similar value-added tax in other countries. The biggest source of worry is small suppliers, who are exempt from GST below a threshold. But that will not help them if people who traditionally have been sourcing from them shift to large suppliers who are GST-compliant and upload the returns and invoices the customers need to claim input tax credit.
It is in the interest of the smallest supplier to be able to generate a GST-compliant invoice in order not to lose the custom of small producers and service providers, who need those invoices to reduce their own tax burden. These small suppliers need different kinds of help. The series of advertisements the government has been putting out are a great help. But more can be done on the lines of how the passport office functions under TCS’ outsourced regime. A checklist of the needed documents is available to anyone who wants to apply for a passport. The applicant happily assembles all the relevant documents before s/he commences the process. Such a checklist, with details that specify the size of JPEG and PDF documents that the GSTN site would accept, and instructions on getting a digital signature would help. But the biggest help would-be GST registrants need is in the realm of communications.
India’s is the first value-added tax regime that rides on an information technology and communications backbone from the word go. This is great. But that communication infrastructure must work all the time and everywhere. One necessary step would be to redefine broadband as a data connection that has a minimum speed of 2 Mb per second, instead of the outdated norm of 512 Kbps. Another would be to let Ka band transponders of satellites be available for data connectivity where cable will take time to reach.