Wednesday, December 24, 2014

GST and its Impact on India's Consumer, Manufacturing, Service Sector, State and Central Government

Introduction of GST in India is going to be big boom for domestic IT industry. Tax software will need changes to handle tax credit feature introduced by GST. For export of goods or services there will be GST at the rate of 0%. This is going to impact on Inter-Company transactions setup done in existing Oracle EBS and Hyperion and all tax related setup.

Companies will have to create new account to keep track of GST related transaction. Lot of existing central and state taxes need to be end dated and changes need to be done in tax rules for items which are tax exempt. Petrol, alcoholic liquor for human consumption will still have all the taxes but no GST. Tobacco and tobacco products would be subject to GST. In addition, the Center could continue to levy Central Excise duty and the States to levy sales tax / VAT.

Abolition of Octroi will reduce lead time for procurement. That will trigger some changes into Oracle EBS such as updating lead time and replenishment of stock level.  Companies might reduce there number of warehouses because of tax saving and increased supply chain efficiency.

Government has created a Goods and Service Tax Network (GSTN), the quasi-government company ( http://gstn.org/) and is in the process of finalising the tender for selecting a managed service provider an IT firm to which a majority of the mandate will be outsourced.

Read More: http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/gst-to-snap-up-it-talent-from-the-pvt-sector-114121900421_1.html

This generated my interest into learning more about GST and result of that is this blog post. 

Goods and Service Tax (GST) is India’s biggest indirect tax reform since 1947. 

Finance Minister Arun Jaitely of Modi government tabled the Constitution Amendment Bill 2011, or GST Bill in parliament on 19-Dec-2014. GST Bill seeks to amend the Constitution to allow for the introduction of a uniform, national goods-and-services tax. The implementation of GST has been opposed by some states because they are reluctant to surrender their right to impose such taxes. In particular, some have objected to the inclusion of petroleum products and liquor–major sources of revenue–in the proposed GST. The government aims to bring the tax into effect from April 1, 2016. 

Change in Mindset because of Tax Credit
Under the GST structure, every company gets a deduction on the taxes already paid by its suppliers. That results in every buyer ensuring that his supplier has paid his part to claim his deductions. This will be big mind set change in doing business in India to reduce leakage in tax collection. This will be big relief for tax payer and tax collector. The key is setting right GST rate. 

Best source to get latest information on GST is
1. http://gstindia.com/news.php
2. http://qz.com/317108/the-complete-guide-to-understanding-indias-biggest-tax-reform-the-gst/
3. http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/06/18/is-india-ready-for-uniform-goods-and-services-tax/
4. http://www.cbec.gov.in/deptt_offcr/gst-status-18032014.pdf
5. http://profit.ndtv.com/videos/news/video-standard-rate-in-gst-could-be-27-ey-349492
6. http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/gst-will-lead-to-lower-costs-benefit-supply-chain-biz-tci_1258319.html

There is lot of material available to read but still lot of things are not clear.

Positive Impact on Big Manufacturing Sector
Abolition of Octroi will help to keep factories in the state Reduction is overall tax rate if GST is less than 26%. GST will make products competitive in domestic and international market.

Abolition of Octroi will help improve supply chain efficiency.

Negative impact on Small companies and unorganized sector
Companies with a turnover of Rs 10 lakh (currently Rs 1.5 crore) will have to pay GST.

Negative Impact on Service Sector
At present Manufacturing sector pays lot higher in taxes to government because of cascading effect of Indirect taxes. Manufacturing Sector burden will go down if GST is introduced at the rate between 19% to 22%. But at present Service sector pays close to 12% tax and there burden will increase drastically. How it will impact on Service is still not clear.

Banks and Hotel Industry, Warehouse companies will have to change their accounting rules to treat GST's credit facility. They will have to take GST credit from states.

Accounting Rules for Bill_To and Ship_To in different states 
There are 3 component in GST. Central GST ( CGST), State GST (SGST) and Interstate GST (IGST). CA.P.J.Johney has explained all these taxes very nicely in his YouTube video. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXGc-wY2WqM

Some of the unanswered questions he has raised that if Bill To Party is in one state and Ship To Party is in different state then who will pay the GST? If SGST is different in both state then it will add more complexities. Accounting rules for such transactions are still not clear.

Impact on decision maker to setup new factory location
GST would be a destination based tax as against the present concept of origin based tax. In new system if it is B2B transaction then credit will be available to retailer or manufacturer and SGST will go to destination state.
In new environment states will not be able to offer tax incentives or exemption to setup new factory. If new factory needs to be setup decision maker need to see cost factor and supply chain cycle.

As per Vineet Agarwal, MD of Transport Corporation of India, GST being a consumption tax, it would mean that today let’s assume that there is a company which has five production units and maybe 25 warehouses across India because of saving tax, saving the central sales tax they will start reducing these numbers of warehouses, so instead of 25 warehouses they might have 15 warehouses. Therefore, the distribution matrix will change from five factories to 15 warehouses which would essentially mean that the size of these warehouses will increase essentially reducing the overall inventory but concentrating that inventory at several locations. So a lot of changes will come from supply chain perspective for manufactured products with GST coming in.

  
Impact on State Governments
The Center will compensate the states for loss of revenue arising on account of implementation of the GST for a period up to five years. However, the compensation will be on a tapering basis, i.e. 100% for the first three years, 75% in the fourth year and 50% in the fifth year. Once 5 year loss of revenue compensation period is over then rating agencies will rate the states based on their revenue collection at that time. If rating goes down it will be difficult for state government to raise money at cheaper rate. 

Good news is state's tax collection from service sector will improve drastically.

GST would be a destination based tax as against the present concept of origin based tax. At present states which has lot of manufacturing facility collects larger tax. In new system state with larger consumption will collect more tax. e.g if Maharashtra is biggest consumer of goods and services will collect larger tax. States which of tax incentives to setup new manufacturing facility will go away in new system. To attract new manufacturing they will have to provide good infrastructure, cheaper land and electricity.

Abolition of Octroi will help to keep factories in the state.

There will be levy of an extra 1% origin-based levy on interstate transaction for 2 years. Set-offs will not be available against this extra levy, the proceeds of which will be collected by the Center and assigned to states from where the supply originates.

Impact on Central Government 
Till now there no news which will impact Central Government negatively.  GST would apply to all goods and services barring a few to be specified. Because of wider tax collection base revenue is going to increase for central government. Higher rate will kill the economy but that chance is very low because we have very smart prime minister at the center.

Import of goods or services would be treated as inter-State supplies and therefore, would be subject to IGST in addition to the applicable customs duties

Central Board of Excise and Customs will have to change their software to handle collection and credit system and get ready to handle for increased number of tax payers.  

Impact on Citizens
Prices of manufactured goods will go down and that benefit will get pass to consumer. Prices of some service sector will go up. 

GST more or less equalises taxation across products, and hence may be iniquitous. For example, currently center and states can levy higher taxes on luxury goods and services (five-star dinners, cars above a certain size) and this is fair. Once GST kicks in, all goods and services may end up paying the same tax. This means the rich who buy luxury goods may pay less tax and the poor more than they should. This goes against the basic tenets of taxing the rich more and the poor less.

Read more at: http://www.firstpost.com/india/5-reasons-gst-may-cracked-1857539.html

The Goods and Service Tax Network (GSTN), the quasi-government company tasked with building the technology backbone for the long-pending indirect tax reform, is looking to hire technology professionals from companies such as Infosys, Wipro, Accenture and others.

Truck drivers will be able to deliver goods faster and resulting more revenue to them.


To summarize this if GST rolls-out at attractive rate, it will be a big boost to India's domestic market.