Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day promise, last week, of cheaper daily-use items through a simplified two-slab Goods & Services Tax (GST) structure, as part of “next-generation reforms" and a Diwali gift for the nation, has triggered sharp political reactions from the Congress Party and Rahul Gandhi, who now wish to claim credit for GST being “their idea". What is the truth? The simple truth is this — GST was dubbed as the “Gabbar Singh Tax" by Rahul Gandhi, mocking at what has inarguably been India’s greatest indirect tax reform by the Modi government.

Rahul Gandhi and his coterie of sycophants can keep vacillating between false bravado and sheer desperation at what they could have done with GST. But finally, an idea is only as good as its implementation. So while the Congress built flaky castles in the air by sitting on the Kelkar committee recommendations for ten long years, kudos to the Modi government, for eventually making GST a reality on 1st July 2017. In fact, it is time for the Congress to stop playing the ‘martyr’ and churlishly blaming the BJP for ‘snatching’ their idea, which never was their idea in any case, to start with. In a democracy, an idea is worth its weight in gold only if executed effectively. And clearly, despite multiple hurdles, thanks to Prime Minister Modi’s courage of conviction, GST became a reality.

It has been widely reported that the Modi government is mulling two main slabs, 5 per cent for common-use items and 18 per cent for most other goods, in a bid to make life simpler and less taxing for citizens and businesses. A higher 40 per cent levy on sin goods like cigarettes for instance, is likely. Notably, July 2025 marked the 8th anniversary of GST, famously called “One Nation One Tax", which makes India a unified, common market. It is a single, destination based, multi-stage tax on the supply of goods and services, right from the manufacturing to the consumption stage. Credits of input taxes paid at each stage are available in the subsequent stage of value addition, which makes the GST, essentially a tax only on value addition at each stage. It is indeed the Input Tax Credit (ITC), besides a whole host of other progressive moves, which make the GST, as we know it in India, superior to any other consumption-based or Value Added Tax in any other country in the world.

GST collections during the month of July 2025 came in at Rs 1.96 lakh crore (7.5 per cent growth........

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