GST: Awareness and perception of small business persons’ (SBPS)

Abstract

Recently India witnessed a change in its indirect tax regime. There was much of chaos in the country as people did not have much knowledge and understanding for this new system, i.e. GOODS AND SERVICE TAX (GST). The Small business persons (SBP) were the most effected segment in terms of the changes to be done because of GST.In this paper an attempt has been made to observe the awareness and perceptions about GST among SBPs. Also how far government is successful to get acquainted SBPs about GST.Particularly we are focussing onSBPs perception about the new the tax system (e. g. transparency, burden on SBP’s), and its administration.The results shows that initially there was low level awareness but as the time progressed the level of awareness also increased among the SBPs about GSTnot all SBPs perceived the GST system as being reasonably simple or easy to understand. However, it was observed that most of the SBPs were making efforts to get acquainted with the new tax regime since starting only, i.e. when GST bill was passed Many SBPs also specified that they depend onaccounting software for keeping a proper record of their GST transactions. Though the GST was considered as simple, but there are some compliance cost which give a burden to SBPs.This study is qualitative nature and it is observation based research.