New Delhi, Jan 31(KNN) The current data on Goods and Service Tax depicts a large growth in registration by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to avail input tax credits, revealed the Economic Survey.

As per the preliminary analysis of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) data,  India’s indirect tax payer base has increased by 50% with the implementation of GST, not only this, there is also a large increase in voluntary registrations especially by small enterprises that make purchases from large enterprises to avail Input Tax Credits (ITC)

The Economic Survey 2017-18 presented in Parliament by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stated that as on December 2017, more than 9.8 million taxpayers have registered under GST which was slightly more than tax payers registered under old tax regime.

In a move to remove cascading effect of double taxation , the number of unique indirect taxpayer have increased by more than 50% percent –a substantial 3.4 million under GST regime.

Also the profile of new filers is interesting as their total turnover is quite large, the bulk of transactions are business-to-business (B2B) and exports, which account for 30-34 percent , business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions account for only 17 percent of the total.

About 1.7 million registrants who were below the threshold limit are not obliged to register. Out of the total estimated 71 million non-agriculture enterprises, it is estimated that around 13 percent are registered under the GST. (KNN/YV)