mumbai postdemonetisation and introduction of goods services tax gst the government has set an agenda of cleaning up political funding and increasing tax compliance according to finance minister arun jaitleyjaitley said although the government had factored in a huge amount of disruption the switchover to gst has been smoother than anticipated he said that there was grassroots support for demonetisation and gst and while there were few protests the reaction of the consumer has been why should you not pay tax the support was also evident from the fact that the jk assembly despite opposition from rival parties had adopted gst on wednesday the finance minister was speaking at the state bank of indias fourth banking and economist conclave in mumbai on wednesdayon the agenda for political funding jaitley said for the last 70 years the worlds largest democracy has survived on the kind of funding which really brings no credit to the democracy itself in his budget speech in february this year jaitley had cut the ceiling on cash donations to political parties from rs 20000 to rs 2000 also a proposal to issue electoral bonds has been put forward for consideration the finance minister said that the demonetisation had resulted in 92 lakh more people being forced to file returns in the case of indirect tax the number of businesses that were registered under excise vat and service tax was around 80 lakh i do feel that as a result of the combination of demonetisation and gst indias tax to gdp ratio will rise said jaitleyaccording to him traders that were protesting against gst were doing so out of concern that individual incomes would now be open to scrutiny the indirect tax is being passed on to the customer so why is the trader objecting he is objecting because the volume of his business would be known and this time he will have to file tax returnsresponding to a query on the change in the financial year jaitley said we have already started a process of consultation where we have the report of a committee before us it is not a matter in which the government has taken any decisionthe finance minister also indicated that the government would be moving in the direction of a progressive taxation structure for businesses the system is also aimed at providing a rate which is quite reasonable to incentivise them into paying a tax which is reasonable he saidjaitley said that after demonetisation and gst the manner in which india has been able to take difficult decisions and implement them have made reforms look easier i do see that next one or two years is going to be the period of implementation the net impact is to be greater buoyancy as far as taxes are concerned in the medium or long term the direction of our expenditure should be the main priority as far as government is concerned he said