India’s Tax Reform Needs Economics, Not Politics: Mihir Sharma

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often described the reform of India’s indirect taxes as his landmark achievement. In 2017, a patchwork of national, state- and local-level sales and excise levies were replaced by a single goods and services tax that economists claimed would increase government revenue while also being business friendly.

More than eight years on, it has become clear the GST hasn’t met expectations. The government recently announced that Modi’s right-hand man, Home Minister Amit Shah, would be put in charge of negotiations to fix it.

This is both good and bad news. It’s good news that Modi is ...