A Look at the tax on education

Education is one of the most important aspects of living a good life, and more and more people around the world have been gaining awareness of education’s importance.

Not only does it have a significant impact on individual lives, but it also has a massive impact on a nation’s general quality of life.

Social progress or economic progress in any country is based on its ability to leverage human capital, and workers who are properly educated are generally better and more skilled.

Out of India’s massive population, 28% consists of children between 0 and 14 years of age, the future demographic dividend.

One million of these people enter the Indian workforce each month, and in the future, this could either hinder or improve India’s growth aspects.

However, in India, there are numerous problems in contrasting education and industry requirements. There is a glaring gap in what children are taught versus the requirements of the industry, which renders much of the population unemployed or unemployable. Additionally, the recently-enacted Goods and Services Tax (or GST) is not helping this issue.

Although it claims to improve the overall state of the Indian economy, it is placing an 18% tax on auxiliary services of higher education, such as security, transportation, and even admission-related services.

Thus, this facet of the GST is harmful to the economy in the long run, since the schools will almost certainly pass the burden of that tax on their students. This will lead to a rapid rise in the cost of higher education, and therefore, a less-educated and less-skilled workforce. However, many people are speaking out against this issue and urging the GST council to remove the tax on higher education facilities.

Since schools are social facilities, not businesses, people are making valid arguments in defence of higher education institutions not being taxed by the GST, and the GST council will have to consider a reexamination of the issue for the benefit of both the country’s people and its economy.

Image by Vidhyarthi Darpan from Pixabay (Free for commercial use)

Image Reference: https://pixabay.com/photos/education-learning-engineering-4796952/