Goods and Service Tax Act has been the new law that has repealed all the laws of the indirect tax regime. This new law is categorized into four parts, and the Act is all about CGST Act, SGST Act, UTGST Act, and IGST Act. With the introduction of this Act, the registrations of taxpayers under all the other indirect tax laws also stand expired. Now the taxpayers will have to take a new registration under the GST Act. This registration will give them a Fifteen Digits GST Number every business needs.     

Besides this, there are many other changes that the Act has brought with it. And all these changes have had a significant impact on the Indian Economy as well as the taxpayers. Here are the changes that the Act has brought.

Changes With the Coming of GST Act

One Law

GST has come as one single law for the diverse tax structure within the country. This has made things extremely easier for taxpayers. Earlier where they had to manage compliance with the provisions of four different laws, now only a one does it all for them. This significantly saves time, energy, as well as money.

New Registrations

In any Act, registration is a crucial thing. The registrations set your identity under the Act and give you recognition. In the older indirect tax laws as well, every taxpayer had to get registered under the Act. But since those Acts stand repealed, all the registrations under those Acts become useless and expired now. 

All the taxpayers need to take new registrations under the GST Act. The change here is that the taxpayers can get done away with one single registration instead of four separate registrations under each of the Service Tax Act, VAT Act, Excise Act, and Sales Tax Act. So, the costs for the businesses are significantly decreased with the ease of maintaining one single registration certificate.

GST Website

This is another development brought by the GST Act. All the information related to GST, announcements, latest GST news, all is available on this website. There was no such website in the earlier regime, and people did face quite some difficulty to stay updated. With this website, the people no more face such problems.

Online Portal

This is a big change brought by the GST Act. The step is towards digital India and is impressive. This portal has eased out a whole lot of things for the taxpayers. Every maintenance, every compliance that they need to do concerning the GST Act, they can do it through this portal.

The portal allows the taxpayers to fill up the registration forms and get their GST Identification number online. They can also download their registration certificates from the portal. This saves the taxpayers a lot of time and energy in the sense that they do not have to make rounds to the tax offices, and everything is at their hands.

The taxpayers can also file their returns and make GST payments online. Even they do not need to maintain separate documents for these things now. Everything is reflected in the portal on the taxpayer’s user ID. The details of the returns filed, and every payment detail is on the portal in separate registers. For recording the payments, the portal maintains an entirely different cash ledger register for every taxpayer.

With all these changes, there has been a significant impact on the Indian Economy. But have these impacts come for good? Well, I think they have. Here are the advantages of the GST Act that has helped the Economy a lot.

Advantages of the GST Act

Eliminated Cascading Effect

In the earlier laws, due to their multiplicity, there came about a subsequent multiplicity of taxes. Meaning, even if you have already paid the tax under one Act, you will still have to pay the tax yet again in some other Act. This resulted in double taxation and thus a cascading effect. The businesses faced significant losses due to this, which definitely affected the Indian Economy.

However, GST brought all the taxes in one single regime. So, you have to pay only one single tax at every point of time. This reduces the cascading effect of tax on the taxpayers, and they can do higher business. This will, in turn, benefit the Indian Economy, since it depends on the businesses within the country only

Eliminated Corruption

In the earlier laws, due to double taxation and excessive tax liabilities, the taxpayers used to tend to escape the tax liabilities by tampering with their returns and showing fewer sales and business. This led to corruption and had a drastic adverse effect on the Economy.

However, with GST, things are more transparent, and even taxpayers don’t take up to unfair means because the burden is less on them. So, the corruption gets eliminated, and the Economy improves.

Easier Compliances

GST is one uniform law that has brought the complete indirect tax regime under one single umbrella. This has led to easier compliances for the businesses. Due to this, businesses can focus better on their other strategical operations instead of being stuck with the legal compliances. This has made the Economy more productive by having businesses perform better.

Conclusion

The changes that the GST Act has brought have significantly boosted the Indian Economy. Still, when we talk about the CGST Act, or SGST Act, or IGST Act, or UTGST Act, there are some disadvantages. For instance, businesses may need to spend a little more on their operational costs. So, the Act is not free from negatives, but the positives are far more. Everything, the GST number 15 digits that every business needs, the online portal, the website, everything has been working great for the Act and serving the good purpose.

This is one great Act that the government of India has come up with. And the Act is continuously improving. So, stay updated, and know what further new and better this Act will bring to you.