India’s Tax Reform

he greatest political venture since that originated in Philadelphia in 1787.” That is how the renowned American historian Granville Austin described...

India’s ‘simplified’ tax scheme is anything but simple

Twenty-nine disparate states are now working under the same, centralised Goods and Services Tax, but most seem ill-prepared for the tidal wave of economic disorder it seems likely to bring...

The GST anti-profiteering ‘weapon’

This new 'weapon' in the arsenal of the Union government has been designed and launched as part of the Goods and Services Tax...

The flip side of ‘one nation, one tax’

India is the only large country in the world that is experiencing subnational income divergence...

Income divergence: governance or development model?

Within most of the large states, the economic gap between richer and poorer districts is widening, not narrowing...

Will GST exacerbate India’s income divergence?

In another decade from now, it is likely that the per capita income of the richest state will be more than four times the per capita income of the poorest state...

Ways out of the GST maze

One day in 1974, the American economist Arthur Laffer went to lunch at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. with two senior...

Why a cap on the proposed Goods and Services Tax is a good idea

A legal ceiling can force governments away from indirect taxes like the GST towards collecting direct taxes like income tax more efficiently...

Cap on GST must to curb widening economic inequality in India

Avoid generating higher tax revenue through indirect taxes that hit the poor the hardest, write Ajit Ranade and Praveen Chakravarty...