Q."GST is a destination-based consumption tax." Explain this statement.

GST revenue is meant to end up with the state where a good or service is actually finally consumed, not the state that happened to produce it — a real reversal from how the old CST worked. …

A destination-based tax is one where the tax revenue is attributed to, and retained by, the jurisdiction where the good or service is finally consumed — as opposed to an origin-based tax, where revenue goes to the jurisdiction where the good was produced or from which it originated.

Under GST, when goods move from a producing state to a consuming state (an inter-state supply), IGST is collected by the Centre but is ultimately apportioned to the destination (consuming) state, not retained by the producing/origin state. This is a deliberate design feature, and a genuine reversal from the pre-GST Central Sales Tax (CST), which was an origin-based tax — CST revenue on an inter-state sale went to the state where the sale originated (the producing/exporting state), regardless of where the goods were ultimately consumed. …

Confusing 'destination-based' with 'origin-based' — this is exactly the reverse of how the pre-GST Central Sales Tax worked, and …