Department of Economics Organized a Seminar on “GST: An Economic Evaluation”

Date: 24^th August 2017

Speaker: Dr. Kumarjit Mandal, Department of Economics, Prof, University of Calcutta

Synopsis of the lecture: The concept of VAT was first floated in 1918 by a German industrialist Wilhem Von Siemens. It was first implemented as a comprehensive tax regime in France in 1954.Now almost 160 countries has embraced VAT/GST as the preferred mode of consumption tax. The latest one to board the bandwagon is Malaysia who introduced GST in 2015. In 2006, the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram made the case for GST in his budget speech. He said, “The world over, goods and services attract the same rate of tax. That is the foundation of a GST.” However, in 2009 the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers called for a two-tier GST as the ideal solution for a country like India. Goods and Services Tax is a form of Indirect Tax. State taxes on commodities and services are the prominent source of general government revenue .There will be problems with GST in the short-run. In the long-run, it is expected to be a good tax system.