Tamil Nadu is doing much better than the national average in Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection with growth of around 7 per cent till August as against the previous year. The slowdown has not yet hit the State, possibly because of the diversified economy, said State Finance Secretary S Krishnan.

“I was less concerned about the possibility of revenue loss, and subsequent developments have actually proved that. The biggest gainers from the GST have been the North-Eastern States, but after that, amongst the States with much higher rate of growth is Tamil Nadu,” he said in his address at the two-day All India Workshop on GST organised by the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

As a high consuming State, Tamil Nadu has done fairly well post GST. Around 60 per cent of the economy is on the services sector, which fell under the State government’s tax net till GST was introduced . “GST is extremely ambitious. This is something that is not even done in a large federal country like the US,” he said.

The real issue is to realise the tax all along the value chain from where the production actually takes place. This means that compliance, enforcement records across other States where the input tax credit have to be transferred through the GST network needs to be effectively captured. The compliance record may or may not be good in other States.. This is really the concern, he said.

Ramakumar Ramamoorthy, President, MCCI, urged the government to revisit complex new GST returns, take feedback from industry and ensure that rigorous tests are carried out before launching the new set of returns. Currently, countless person-hours are being wasted on the GSTIN portal, multiple e-mails to help-desks result in template responses and local jurisdictional office expresses helplessness on the ground, he said.

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