MUMBAI: India recorded its sharpest jump of 30 places to 100th place in the 2018 World Bank’s ease of doing business rankings, government officials are worried that complex returns filing procedures and delays in refund of input tax credits under the goods and services tax (GST) regime may prove a drag on the country’s ranking, to be released in October. The survey for the next Doing Business ranking will start in February and will continue till May. Unless government takes quick corrective steps, GST may prove to be a dampener in the first (post-GST) year of the ranking though it will improve our ranking in subsequent years,” a commerce and industry ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.India recorded its sharpest jump of 30 places to 100th place in the 2018 World Bank’s ease of doing business rankings, government officials are worried that complex returns filing procedures and delays in refund of input tax credits under the goods and services tax (GST) regime may prove a drag on the country’s ranking, to be released in October.The survey for the next Doing Business ranking will start in February and will continue till May. Unless government takes quick corrective steps, GST may prove to be a dampener in the first (post-GST) year of the ranking though it will improve our ranking in subsequent years,” a commerce and industry ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Paying Taxes” measures payments, time, total tax and contribution rate for a medium-sized firm to comply with all tax regulations as well as post-filing processes. While the country will benefit on the number of taxes paid in a year as GST subsumes dozens of state and central taxes, it may take a hit on the number of hours required to file the taxes and compliance time of GST refund process, captured in the post-filing index. The World Bank included the “post-filing index” criteria for the first time in its 2017 Doing Business report under the “Paying Taxes” head. This restricted India’s improvement in ranking to just one place to 130 out of 190 countries despite a slew of reforms undertaken by the government. The post-filing index is based on four components time to comply with GST refund, time to obtain GST refund, time to comply with corporate income tax audit and time to complete a corporate income tax audit. The GST refund is an integral component of a modern indirect tax system.
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