With the easier compliance and supported business growth of the new tax regime, India Inc. has had an overall positive experience with the Goods and Services Tax (GST) over the past eight years; however, transparency in norms and effective dispute resolution are still necessary.
Deloitte India’s GST@8 survey highlighted the importance of having better ways to resolve tax disputes, making tax rates more fair across different industries, and ensuring that audits by central and state tax authorities are more consistent.
A recent survey gathered opinions from 963 senior leaders across various industries, and their feedback highlighted several key areas for improvement. They expressed a desire for more flexible export regulations, simpler goods and services tax (GST) rates that make sense for the whole supply process, and better access to funds to help businesses operate more effectively.
As per the survey, some challenges in the ease of doing business under GST include getting refunds, a limited understanding of new-age business models, and expansive pro-revenue legal interpretations by authorities remain a challenge.
The survey for the GST registration process suggests pan-India standardisation of registration documents, enabling simultaneous amendment and decreased registration timelines, which were emphasised as reforms to improve the GST registration process.
From 59 per cent in 2022 to 85 per cent in 2025, confidence in GST has surged under the survey, which is pushed by enhanced compliance maturity, digitisation, and proactive engagement by policymakers, Deloitte India President, Tax, Gokul Chaudhri mentioned.
In e-invocing and return auto-population, the automation of the tax process has been outlined by him, which continues to furnish the advantages, and the industry considers the collaborative approach of the government in solving the concerns via timely clarifications.
45 per cent of MSMEs support rate rationalisation to improve competitiveness, as specified under the survey.
According to the survey, in comparison, large and very large companies (45 per cent and 47 per cent, respectively) prioritise the establishment of an effective dispute resolution procedure to support operational certainty.
On July 1, 2017, Goods and Services Tax (GST) was introduced. GST subsumed nearly 17 local taxes and 13 cesses into a 5-tier structure, facilitating the tax regime.
Under GST, the number of registered taxpayers in 8 years has surged from 65 lakh in 2017 to 1.52 crore.
