India's GST system most complex globally: World Bank

The World Bank has said India's GST system is the most complex in the world. 

The World Bank said, in a report, that India has the highest standard GST rate in Asia and the second-highest in the world after Chile. 

India has five different GST rates — 0. 5, 12, 18, and 28 per cent. Which commentators say is contradictory, considering the idea of a goods and services tax is to replace a number of different taxes with one overarching tax. So why would you have "one" tax with different slabs. 

On top of that, petroleum products, power and real estate have been kept outside the ambit of GST. 

The government has promised to streamline the taxation system but has time and again said it will not pare it down to only one rate. 

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had recently said a rich country could afford to slap the same GST rate on a Mercedes car and, say, a bottle of water. But that a country like India with far higher levels of inequality could not afford to do the same.