The GST will have a pervasive impact on financial institutions. The treatment of financial services as input-taxed means that the impact on profit is expected to be unfavourable overall, perhaps materially so if lobbying efforts on key issues are not successful. The transitional costs will be higher if financial institutions do not adequately prepare themselves. In principle the GST is not complex; however, some of the transitional issues require full and early attention to keep the cost of GST down. For financial institutions, managing the commercial and the information technology (IT) issues is the key to successful implementation of the GST. The GST requires a structured implementation and compliance program. The author discusses the impact in this paper.
maintenance