Journal Press India^®

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Goods and Services Tax (GST) has been introduced in India to curb the limitations of earlier indirect tax laws. It was expected to bring down the cost by removing cascading effects, improve ease of doing business through the ease of compliances, and to act as a check on tax evasion practices. GST has been successful in many of its objectives, however, a lot of improvements are still needed to ripe the full benefits of GST. Particularly, amidst the coronavirus scenario, there are more expectations from GST to revive the surviving sectors. The prime focus of this paper is to evaluate the impact of GST on different sectors in India by making a categorical comparison with the earlier indirect tax system and to study how coronavirus has worsened the situation. It is emphasized that the impact of GST on different sectors and different industries has not been uniform. The new pandemic has increased the suffering by manifold and stimulus package announced by Government of India cannot be regarded sufficient. It would be prudent if tax rates, particularly for beaten sectors are brought down to push demand so that the surviving sectors may be revived.

Keywords

Goods and Services Tax (GST); Value added tax (VAT); CGST; SGST; IGST; Tax deduction at source (TDS).

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