GST-Concept and Status-Aster Billing

The uniform system of taxation, which, with a few exceptions of no great consequence, takes place in all the different parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, leaves the interior commerce of the country, the inland and coasting trade, almost entirely free. The inland trade is almost perfectly free, and the greater part of goods may be carried from one end of the kingdom to the other, without requiring any permit or let-pass, without being subject to question, visit, or examination from the revenue officers. ……This freedom of interior commerce, the effect of uniformity of the system of taxation, is perhaps one of the principal causes of the prosperity of Great Britain; every great country being necessarily the best and most extensive market for the greater part of the productions of its own industry. If the same freedom, in consequence of the same uniformity, could be extended to Ireland and the plantations, both the grandeur of the state and the prosperity of every part of the empire, would probably be still greater than at present”
 Adam Smith in ‘Wealth of Nations’
Whether it was uniformity of taxation and consequent free interior trade orpossession of ‘the jewel in the crown’ at the root of prosperity of Britain isdebatable, nonetheless the words of father of modern economics on the benefitsof uniformity of system of taxation cannot be taken too lightly. Beforeimplementation of Goods and Service Tax (GST), Indian taxation system was afarrago of central, state and local area levies. By subsuming more than a score oftaxes under GST, road to a harmonized system of indirect tax has been pavedmaking India an economic union.