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Since India introduced the goods and services tax (GST) in July 2017, the tax reform has seen numerous changes. About 18 months into its life, it is still under intense scrutiny. Mint takes a look at GST’s evolution and its future direction. Then and now In the pre-GST tax regime, each commodity would attract up to 17 taxes,  Under the GST, four tax slabs were introduced, with each item taxed at one rate.  The plan is to move towards a single standard rate in the future of around 15%  Since its implementation GST rates have been sharply cut on many items. The highest slab of 28% has only 27 categories of products, down from close to 228 at the time of rollout  Has GST succeeded in achieving its goals? The goods and services tax (GST) replaced 17 central and state taxes that existed before and has led to the removal of check posts at state borders, transforming India into a single market. It cut business costs by removing what is called “tax on tax”. GST has a...

The cost of capital needs to be lowered to support economic growth, said principal economic adviser in the finance ministry Sanjeev Sanyal, building a case for a rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its February monetary policy review.  The macro environment has by and large improved and conditions are in place for re-acceleration of the economy, Sanyal said in an interview. “Now that we have anchored inflation to a lower level, we need to bring down interest rates to be in sync with the new inflation rates. How we achieve this transition is, of course, the RBI’s and monetary policy committee’s prerogative,” said Sanyal. Sanjeev Sanyal, principal economic adviser in the finance ministry, maintains a fine balance between his profession of an economist advising the government on the financial sector and his interest in reading and writing on history. In an interview, Sanyal talks about supervising more closely the larger systemically important nonbanking financial compa...