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Monday, January 29, 2018

2017-18 Economic Survey - 50% increase in indirect taxpayer base post GST

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation has increased indirect taxpayer base by more than 50 per cent with 34 lakh businesses coming into the tax net, the Economic Survey 2017-18 said

As per the data available, GST collections in July was over Rs 95,000 crore, while in August the figure was over Rs 91,000 crore. In September, it was over Rs 92,150 crore, October Rs 83,000 crore, November Rs 80,808 crore and December Rs 86,703 crore.

The Survey said the highest number of GST registrants are in the states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.

The Survey, tabled by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Lok Sabha, said there are about 17 lakh businesses registered under GST despite their turnover being below the threshold limit of Rs 20 lakh. One of the many benefits of the GST was the voluntary compliance it would elicit, it said.

As on December 2017, 98 lakh businesses were registered under the GST regime, higher than the total indirect tax registrants under the old system

The Economic Survey, authored by Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian said, preliminary analysis of data shows GST registrants rose mainly on account of large increase in voluntary registrations, especially by small enterprises that buy from large enterprises and want to avail themselves of input tax credits.
“The GST has increased the number of unique indirect taxpayers by more than 50 per cent—a substantial 3.4 million,” it said, adding GST embodies and heralds a radical alteration and enlargement in the understanding of the Indian economy.

The Survey also said that Central GST (CGST) was lower than State GST (SGST), whereas ideally they had to be equal. This possibly was because of unutilised credit available in respect of excise and service tax.

It said the pre-GST revenue collection by Centre and states was Rs 9.7 lakh crore, while the estimated annualised GST revenue collection is expected at Rs 10.9 lakh crore. It said that based on the trends of revenue collections, the revenue neutral rate (RNR) of GST should be between 15–16 per cent. In December 2015, a Subramanian-headed panel had recommended RNR should be between 15–15.5 per cent for GST, with a preference for the lower one.

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