Impact Assessment of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on Shopkeepers

Abstract

India has got a well-structured and simplified taxation system, where authoritative segregation has been done among the Central government, state governments and local bodies. But with the implementation of GST, the harmonization of tax rules, regulations, rates, processes and procedures across the states was expected to improve the ease of doing business in India. The removal of cascading of taxes and transaction costs associated with inter-state transactions was also expected to encourage investment and therefore, the economic growth of country. With the objective of the impact assessment of Goods and Services Tax on shopkeepers the present study was carried out. The study was conducted in Hisar city of Haryana state where the findings highlighted that shopkeepers had highly increased tax burden and legal compliances, followed by increase in workers hiring capacity and no impact on ease of doing business, no loss and transparency in business. Further, results also showed that there was decrease in profit as they have to pay taxes more than 6 times in a year. With the implementation of GST, shopkeepers were having constraint in filing GST as now is getting a complicated process and due to changing GST rates they were facing high competition amongst the market.