GST rate cut is credit negative: Moody’s

30 Jul 2018 Evaluate

Few days after the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council cut tax rates on several products including refrigerators, washing machines and small televisions, the global credit rating agency, Moody’s Investors Service in its latest report has said that this recent move is ‘credit negative’ for the country as it will put pressure on efforts of fiscal consolidation and will weigh on the government's revenue collection.

According to the report, the government may face revenue loss of around 0.04%-0.08% of GDP annually, due to these tax cuts. The rating agency further noted that even-though the proportion of revenue loss is small, the vacillation in tax rates creates uncertainty around government revenue and comes amid persistent upside risks to its expenditures.

Besides, Moody’s underlined that the government’s budgeted gross tax revenue growth of 16.7% for the current fiscal and collections from GST, will play an important role to drive future government revenue because of a wider tax base and tax buoyancy. Further, the report said that GST collection has increased since December 2017, but iterative changes to tax rates create downside risks to the target of Rs 7.4 lakh crore ($100 billion) for the full fiscal year.

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