A preliminary analysis of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) data reveals that there has been a 50 per cent…
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. (Photo: Twitter)
A preliminary analysis of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) data reveals that there has been a 50 per cent increase in the number of indirect taxpayers, according to the Economic Survey 2017-18 presented on Monday in the Parliament by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
Jaitley informed the House that as on December 2017, there were 9.8 million unique GST registrants, slightly more than the total Indirect Tax registrants, under the old system (where many taxpayers were registered under several taxes).
Therefore, adjusting the base for double and triple counting, the GST has increased the number of unique indirect taxpayers by more than 50 per cent –a substantial 3.4 million.
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The increase in taxpayers is in addition to a large increase in voluntary registrations, especially by small enterprises that buy from large enterprises and want to avail themselves of Input Tax Credits (ITC).
The profile of new filers is interesting of their total turnover, business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions account for only 17 per cent of the total.
The bulk of transactions are business-to-business (B2B) and exports, which account for 30-34 per cent apiece. There are about 1.7 million registrants who were below the threshold limit (and hence not obliged to register) who nevertheless chose to do so. Indeed, out of the total estimated 71 million non-agriculture enterprises, it is estimated that around 13 per cent are registered under the GST.
Maharashtra, UP, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are the States with the greatest number of GST registrants. There has been large increases in the number of tax registrants compared to the old tax regime in UP and West Bengal.
It also underlines that the distribution of the GST base among the States is closely linked to the size of their economies, allaying fears of major producing States that the shift to the new system would undermine their tax collections.
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