How can it be good if it's not simple?

"The government collected Rs 1.3 lakh crore (Rs 1.3 trillion) from goods and services tax (GST) during October, the second highest since the implementation of the tax in 2017, indicating a strong trend of the ongoing economic recovery in the second half of the financial year," ET. "The revenues have been aided by increased compliance over previous months through efforts of state and central tax administration besides an upward trend in percentage of returns filed leading to timely payment of taxes. The government has also taken action against individual tax payers to plug revenue leaks." GST was supposed to replace a plethora of taxes on goods and services levied by central and state governments in India and is supposed to be shared equally between center and state governments, bajajfinserve. In practice, however, the central government collects 19.9% of its revenue by adding cesses and surcharges on taxes paid by individuals and businesses, which are not shared with the states, thus depriving states of their share of revenue, BS. "Between the March-ended quarter of 2018 and the March-ended quarter of 2021, the quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) in nominal terms has increased 24%. It is expected that GST collections would grow in tandem with GDP, which has happened, especially after the ebbing of the covid-19 pandemic," wrote Arjun Srinivas. However, growth in nominal GDP could be because of increased prices and, since GST is collected as a percentage of the price of any goods or service, tax collections will naturally rise in tandem with nominal GDP. A comparison with real GDP, investopedia, would perhaps be more informative. Average retail inflation in 2018 was 4.85%, in 2019 it was 7.66% and in 2020 it was 5.58%, inflation.eu. GST was proclaimed as a 'Good and Simple Tax' by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when it became law, but it became very complicated because there is no trust between the Center and states ruled by other parties, and between governments and citizens. Thus, "A dual GST was adopted. The Centre and the state governments now have equal tax jurisdiction across goods and services and have equal right to levy GST on the supply of taxable goods or services on intra-state transactions i.e. on consumption in the destination state rather than the producing state," wrote Vijay Kelkar & Rahul Renavikar. "While this looks simple as a concept, it is being implemented in the same old structure -- a taxpayer having a pan-India presence still needs to obtain as many state goods and services tax (SGST) registrations and track all of them separately besides the central goods and services tax (CGST) and IGST." States which contribute more but get a smaller portion of GST are unhappy. "Four states -- Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Gujarat contribute nearly as much (~45 percent) as the remaining states combined," which is true in other countries as well, but contributions should equalise as poorer states improve their economies, which is not happening in India, wrote Palanivel Thyagarajan & Praveen Chakravarty. This came to a head when 12 states with nearly 70% of India's population wanted to remove taxes on products to care for Covid patients, 19 smaller states with 30% of the population resisted. In June 2021, Finance Minister of West Bengal Amit Mitra complained that he was not allowed to speak during a meeting of the GST Council, which was dutifully denied by a junior minister in the central government, TOI. It's an oppressive  tax on the people. 'Good and simple' it ain't.