Finance minister Arun Jaitley’s announcement that the sun will soon set on 28% GST slab except for luxury items and the country can look forward eventually to only two slabs – 5% and a standard rate between 12% and 18% (apart from exempt items) is welcome. But many think he’s making haste slowly. He can be reminded of the KISS principle. KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid – is a well-known acronym and an accepted credo in business. Attributed to Lockheed aircraft engineer Kelly Johnson, it was to urge his engineers to keep aircraft design so simple that even a stupid person should be able to repair the aircraft with ordinary tools on the combat field. Bureaucracy, the world over, is usually oblivious to the KISS principle. An Amazon ad boasts that it sells more than a crore different products, besides myriad services, with more categories added every day. In this context, asking bureaucrats to identify and categorise all products and services for differential tax slabs in the GST regime is the surest way to get into a muddle. Empirical data from across the world on the benefits of a unified single tax is incontrovertible. So, an unambiguous directive to the bureaucracy is necessary to come up with just two categories: goods eligible for zero tax, and all the rest to come under a single rate, say 10% or 12% or even lower. That means everything, except those specifically exempt, is taxed. This needs bold and clear reformist thinking at the… [Read full story]
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