The Goods and Service Tax is India’s colossal tax reform and at this stage, its critical for each and every one of us to know GST in detail.

I am aware of the new rules and its applications in my day to day activity and as well as business activities. Half knowledge or no knowledge is going to cause a lot of chaos in the longer run. I strongly feel that every citizen should have complete information about GST. After all, it’s the biggest transformation we are going to experience!

Additionally, we attended seminars that took place in our business circle. Accountants have stepped up both online and offline to impart knowledge about implications of GST, what to expect and the pros-and-cons which is exceptional!

GST benefits the printing business. As of now, GST seems to be making the billing process a lot simpler. The industry has seen multiple tax points, which affected the flow of work. Every product was in a different tax bracket (ceramic mug 14.5%, paper 5%, ink 5%) and the billing process would have taken forever. This seems to be a thing of the past now.

Also, indirect taxes have been a major drawback for people like Sigma Corp who do value addition. But with GST, everyone would be on a level playing field. This would help smaller printing stations who do personalised job work as well.

As far as our company is concerned, our paperwork needed for day-to-day business using GST has been done and hence we are prepared. But for the smooth run of business, all suppliers and customers have to adapt and that is a big challenge. Although most people are adapting fast, we still haven’t got all of them on board. This is much more difficult than we imagined. Most of the customers are owners of small stores and have understood the old tax system over years. Their education of GST is now one of our priorities. This would take some time (may be a few weeks after implementation of GST).

It does benefit the industry overall. Printing business, like most other businesses, goes through different levels of people before the final product is made. In such scenarios, other than the actual product, there are a lot of secondary materials used to finish job.

Previously the taxes paid on those materials (example, print screens) could not be claimed back and hence would increase the finished product cost. Now, with GST, those indirect taxes can also be taken as input tax and hence in the longer run, would reduce the cost of the finished goods.

In my opinion GST will impact each one of us positively!

In the present scheme of things, there are a lot of basic household commodities which are highly priced because of indirect taxes. In my view, the GST affect is expected to eliminate these indirect taxes from all tiers of the supply chain. This will give the end customer low-priced goods. Having said this, I do feel that it’s a cumbersome process and chances of it not being a smooth transition are very high. We need to wait and watch as to how much really shall go as surplus in the monthly expenditure.

(Nikita Shah is the managing partner at Sigma Corp, Hyderabad.)