Six years of GST: Compensation cess still needs to be sorted out

On 1 July 2023, India’s goods and services tax (GST) marked its sixth anniversary. I wrote a five-year review last year (Mint, 1 July 2022), commending its compliance simplification after a bad start. I also strongly proposed universal access to the Reverse Charge Mechanism (RCM) to help resurrect informal manufacturing and services. An explicitly permissible feature in the Central GST Act, a univ…