New Delhi: A first-round analysis of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) data shows that there has been a 50 percent rise in the number of indirect taxpayers, besides a large boost in voluntary registrations, especially by small enterprises that purchase from large enterprises and want to benefit themselves of Input Tax Credits (ITC).

This revelation came from the Economic Survey 2017-18 which presented by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today in commencing session of budget 2018.

the data, released on December 2017 had shown that there were 9.8 million unique GST registrants a little more than the total Indirect Tax registrants under the old tax regime in which many taxpayers were registered under several taxes. So, fine-tuning of the base for double and triple counting, the GST has raised the number of exclusive indirect taxpayers by more than 50 percent –an extensive 3.4 million.

The profile of new tax filers is attention-grabbing of their whole turnover, business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions account for only 17 percent of the total. The volume of transactions is business-to-business (B2B) and exports, which account for 30-34 percent respectively.