By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: The Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the Interim Budget 2024-25 in Parliament today asserted that by unifying the highly fragmented indirect tax regime in India, GST has reduced the compliance burden on trade and industry.
“According to a recent survey conducted by a leading consulting firm, 94 per cent of industry leaders view the transition to GST as largely positive and according to 80 per cent of the respondents, it has led to supply chain optimization” she said. Smt. Sitharaman further added that at the same time, tax base of GST more than doubled and the average monthly gross GST collection has almost doubled to ₹ 1.66 lakh crore this year.
Talking about the increased revenue of States, the Finance Minister said that States’ SGST revenue, including compensation released to states, in the post-GST period of
2017-18 to 2022-23, has achieved a buoyancy of 1.22. In contrast, the tax buoyancy of State revenues from subsumed taxes in the pre-GST four-year period of 2012-13 to 2015-16 was a mere 0.72. The Union Finance Minister asserted that the biggest beneficiaries are the consumers, as reduction in logistics costs and taxes have brought down prices of most goods and services.
Quoting the National Time Release Studies, the Minister said that the steps taken in Customs to facilitate international trade has resulted in a decline in the import release time by 47 per cent to 71 hours at Inland Container Depots, by 28 per cent to 44 hours at air cargo complexes and by 27 per cent to 85 hours at sea ports, over the last four years since 2019.
“Over the last ten years, the direct tax collections have more than trebled and the return filers swelled to 2.4 times”, the Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman said, while presenting the Interim Budget 2024-25 in the Parliament today. The Minister assured taxpayers that their contributions have been used wisely for the development of the country and welfare of its people. She appreciated the tax payers for their support.
Smt. Sitharaman further added that under the new tax regime, the tax rates have been reduced and rationalised. There is now no tax liability for tax payers with income up to ₹ 7 lakh, up from ₹ 2.2 lakh in the financial year 2013-14. The threshold for presumptive taxation for retail businesses was increased from ₹ 2 crore to ₹ 3 crore. Similarly, the threshold for professionals eligible for presumptive taxation was increased from ₹ 50 lakh to ₹ 75 lakh. Also, corporate tax rate was decreased from 30 per cent to 22 per cent for existing domestic companies and to 15 per cent for certain new manufacturing companies.
The Union Minister highlighted that in the last five years, the government’s focus had been to improve tax-payer services. “The age-old jurisdiction-based assessment system was transformed with the introduction of Faceless Assessment and Appeal, thereby imparting greater efficiency, transparency and accountability”, she said.
Smt. Sitharaman also asserted that the introduction of updated income tax returns, a new Form 26AS and pre-filling of tax returns have made filing of tax returns simpler and easier, reducing average processing time of returns from 93 days in the year 2013-14 to a mere ten days this year, thereby making refunds faster.
