Performance Assessment of Indian GST: State-level Analysis of Compliance Gap and Revenue Growth

Revenue from Goods and Services Tax (GST) is not meeting budgetary targets for last two financial years and therefore it is important to understand the reasons behind shortfall in GST collection. Any shortfall in GST collection will not only impact fiscal management of the union government but also it will spill over to state finances in terms of lower tax devolution. Structural changes made in the GST, in terms of increasing GST threshold and reducing tax rates for a large number of goods and services may have helped to moderate the impact of GST on Indian economy, but the revenue impact of the policy decisions cannot be negligible. In addition, revenue impacts of changes made in administrative provisions and procedures in GST require assessment for future policy directions. Moreover, tax compliance under GST is not improving over time and therefore it is further delaying stabilization of GST. There are many challenges that tax administrations (both union and state tax authorities) are facing today in terms of complexities of GST Rules and Regulations and getting access to information for effective tax administration. Given the revenue importance of GST in overall public finance management in India, in-depth understanding the reasons for revenue shortfall could help the government devise policies to overcome the challenges. The challenges before Indian GST can be classified into design and structural aspects of GST and tax administration and compliance related. In this paper we assess compliance and revenue performance of states in GST and estimate GST compliance gap.