Union Budget 2020: Co-operatives Societies Get Tax Benefits

Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman today announced a tax benefit for co-operative societies in the Union Budget 2020.

"Co-operative societies play an extremely important role in our economy in facilitating access to credit, procurement of inputs and marketing of products to their members. These cooperatives are currently taxed at a rate of 30% with surcharge and cess. As a major concession and in order to bring parity between the co-operative societies and corporates, I propose to provide an option to cooperative societies to be taxed at 22% plus 10% surcharge and 4% cess with no exemption/deductions," she said.

The Finance Minister also proposed to exempt these co-operative societies from Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) just like companies under the new tax regime are exempted from the Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT).