Former President of the Confederation of Indian Industry and Veteran industrialist Adi B Godrej has whipped hard on the extension suggestion of goods and service tax in India being pulled out by various industries and individuals by directly tagging them as the tax evaders. The noted industrialist has given his concerns over the postponement of the GST as a ridiculous suggestion by the minded people of the market.
The recently aired news about the extension of GST in October has hit the Godrej understanding about the severity of the issue very high and he has lashed out on the community of such a fickle minded industrial strategy. Mr. Godrej also said that “Everybody has plenty of time to prepare (for the new tax regime). Earlier it was to be April first, now it’s July first. I saw the statement by P Chidambaram (former Finance Minister) to that effect (calling for pushing the GST rollout to October one). But I think it will be ridiculous.”
“First of all, the constitutional amendment expires by September. So, we should not postpone it, and the various people who are asking for postponement are mainly the people who are evading taxes at present. So, they want to avoid getting into the net.” he added. He was very direct on recently surfaced request for shifting the GST roll out later towards October in the wake of nonpreparedness. He has mentioned that postponing of GST towards October would be utter nonsense and could lead to drastic after effects and said that, “No major concerns. The only people who are expressing concerns, the only people who want postponement are the ones who are to my mind are involved in tax evasion.”
His main objective seemed to be very straight forward and was to implement the GST as soon as possible. He said that “First of all, evasion of indirect taxes will become very difficult. So, people will be compliant, that means government revenue will go up because evasion will come down a lot, I expect the (tax) rates to be lower than in the past. That will mean benefit for consumers and consumption will go up and therefore there will be growth. Overall, I expect the Indian GDP growth to improve by 1.5 to two percentage points.”