GST Reforms and Their Impact on Tax Revenue, Business Efficiency and Economic Growth in India: A Review and Meta-Analysis of Past Work

Abstract

The Goods and Services Tax (GST), introduced in India on 1 July 2017, subsumed seventeen indirect taxes and twenty-three cesses into a destination-based, credit-linked levy administered jointly by the Centre and the States, and was comprehensively restructured on 22 September 2025 through the two-slab 'GST 2.0' rationalisation. This review paper synthesises past work through a systematic, PRISMA-informed search of academic databases, working-paper repositories and official publications, followed by a meta-analytic, direction-of-effect synthesis of 133 studies published between 2004 and 2026. Each study was coded by domain, design, coverage, data source and direction of effect, and graded by identification quality. Three findings dominate the literature. First, the revenue effect is the most robust: gross collections rose from ₹7.41 lakh crore in the nine-month first year to ₹22.08 lakh crore in 2024–25, and the registered base exceeded 1.51 crore active taxpayers, although part of the increase is mechanical base-widening and later enforcement technology rather than higher tax efficiency alone. Second, business-efficiency gains from seamless input tax credit, inter-State creditability, check-post removal and digital compliance are real but uneven, with micro and small enterprises bearing disproportionate transitional, compliance and working-capital costs, Third, the claimed growth dividend of one to two per cent of GDP remains an ex-ante simulation result rather than an identified ex-post causal estimate. The paper critically appraises identification, measurement, periodisation and coverage weaknesses in past work, explains why conventional pooled effect sizes are not yet feasible for this literature, and proposes a panel-data, threshold-based and GST 2.0-focused research agenda.