GSTN – The Digital Tax Office

GSTN (Goods & Service Tax Network) opens up unimaginable avenues with the kind of data it will hold; policy framing and determination, study of economic performance and a plethora of research study.If data is streamed into GSTN without aggregations there is a definite potential to view it wearing different lenses, thus build various perspectives.

What is the kind of data that GSTN will possess? It will be supplies and sales data of goods and services of more than 65 lakh corporates of India, big and small and holding close to 40 billion supply invoices. This means details such as the following:

• what is being sold,
•   for how much,
•   when,
• to whom,
• the transportation involved including costs,
• regions and states and their consumption patterns,
• tax revenues,
• tax credits being offered,
• supply chain patterns,

and so on. will be available in the digital tax office.

What does that mean? It gives a bird’s eye view of the economy to start with. As one delves into further depths it gives economists, policy makers, students and academia unimaginable opportunities to study the data,

• synthesize it by itself,
• in conjunction with macro-economic factors and market determinants, •
• in relation to specific demographics of markets such as consumption where there is presence of IT industry, manufacturing industry, financial services personnel and so on.

The potential is huge. And everything done here is purely an outcome that can serve India better and better.