GST has reduced rate, an increase in the number of taxpayers: Finance Ministry

The Finance Ministry said on Monday that the GST has reduced the rate. This helped to just about double the compliance and taxpayer’s base. Consistent with the ministry, tax-related assessments within the country have increased to 1.24 crore. During a series of tweets on the primary death anniversary of former minister of finance Arun Jaitley, the Finance Ministry said that before GST was implemented, people had to pay a tax of up to 31 percent including Value Added Tax (VAT), excise and nuisance tax. During this episode, the announcement of exemption from GST to the businessmen with annual income up to Rs 40 lakh has also been mentioned. Earlier this limit was up to twenty lakh rupees.

Apart from this, the traders whose annual income is up to Rs 1.5 crore can choose a composition scheme. Earlier, only businessmen with annual income up to Rs 75 lakh could choose a composition scheme. The tweet by the Finance Ministry also mentions a discount within the composition rate for manufacturers.

A series of tweets by the Finance Ministry said that since the implementation of the GST, the rate on most things has been reduced. The ministry has said that under the tax slab of 28 percent, only luxury items, and perishable items are left. There have been 230 items under this tax slab, but around 200 items were shifted to low tax slabs.

The ministry has said in another tweet that the development sector and particularly the residential sector give great relief. It’s now placed under the tax slab of 5 percent. The speed of GST on cheap houses is now one-hundredth.

The Finance Ministry said that the taxpayer base has almost doubled since the introduction of GST. At the time of implementation of the GST, the amount of assesses was around 65 lakhs, which has now increased to 1.24 million.

Now the whole process associated with GST has been fully automated. So far, 50 crore returns are filed online and 131 crore e-bills are generated