As a part of Corporate India, Henkel India hopes that some of the expectations we have will be addressed by the Union Finance Minister of India, Mr. Arun Jaitley. Overall, we expect Budget 2018 to consolidate gains from the various structural reforms (such as GST, demonetization etc.) implemented outside the Budget which have helped it formalize the economy. Some of our expectations (related to direct and indirect taxes) from the Union Budget 2018-19 include mainly the GST: Clarity and Improvements:
- The government should define and institute a clear and simple framework for claiming Input Tax Credit (ITC) in the GST regime. Accordingly, restrictions on claim of input tax credit needs to be removed.
- Processes related to GST compliances must be reduced so that business can operate efficiently. Filing of 37 returns per GSTIN is a time-consuming exercise. Thus, it should be simplified.
- Technological glitches of the GST network should be resolved on a war footing.
- The matching concept of input credits requires large volume of data of the supplier to be matched with that of the receiver. This process should be simplified, wherein only broad main criteria may require matching like the invoice value and the tax amount.
