Finance Ministry cites record collection as a sign of ‘rapid recovery’ with the help of year-end adjustments
Finance Ministry cites record collection as a sign of ‘rapid recovery’ with the help of year-end adjustments
India’s gross goods and services tax (GST) revenue hit a new high of Rs 1,67,540 crore in April, with revenue from goods imports growing 30% year-on-year and domestic transactions as well as services. imports increased by 17%.
Overall GST revenue was 20% higher than a year ago, and 17.9% higher than March 2022’s collection of ₹1,42,095 crore. The Finance Ministry said April revenue for transactions done in March reflects ‘rapid recovery’ of business activity, with 7.7 crore e-way bills generated in March, up 13% over February 2022. “For the first time, gross GST collection has crossed Rs. 1.5 lakh crore mark,” it said.
MS Mani, Partner, Deloitte India said, “GST collections have always been high with respect to March, record collections due to several favorable factors, including recent changes on allowing input tax credit only on timely compliance by vendors.”
The ICRA chief said, “Even though the growth in April GST collections partly benefits from year-end adjustments, the high volume inflows so far are very encouraging, and strong year-on-year growth in the coming months as well. It’s a good sign.” Economist Aditi Nair said there is evidence of a healthy pace of economic activity in March despite the escalating geopolitical conflict in Europe.
Central GST revenue constituted ₹33,159 crore of April gross revenue from taxes, while state GST made ₹41,793 crore and integrated GST ₹81,939 crore, which included ₹36,705 crore on import of goods.
GST Compensation Cess collection, used for repayment to states, rose by 13.08% to ₹10,649 crore in April over March collection. The cess collection includes ₹857 crore collected on import of goods, showing a decline of 8.9% from ₹941 crore cess on import of goods in March.
However, there were wide variations in development trends across states. While Tamil Nadu’s collections grew by only 10% in April, Maharashtra grew by 25%, Odisha by 28%, Haryana by 23% and Andhra Pradesh by 22%. Karnataka and Rajasthan registered 19% growth in GST collection, while the growth rate was 17% for Gujarat and 16% for Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.
Six states and union territories, including Bihar (-2%), Manipur (-33%), Mizoram (-19%) and Tripura (-3%), reported a contraction in revenue from a year ago. The inflow of GST from Lakshadweep declined by 18% year-on-year, while in Daman and Diu there was a sharp decline of 78%.
“Government has fixed ₹33,423 crore CGST and ₹26962 crore SGST from IGST. The total revenue of the Center and the states in April 2022 after regular settlement is Rs 66,582 crore for CGST and Rs 68,755 crore for SGST.
“This shows a clear improvement in compliance behaviour, which is a result of various measures taken by the tax administration to facilitate timely filing of returns to the taxpayers, to make compliance easier and smoother, and to ensure that erroneous taxpayers have been identified on the basis of data analysis. Strict enforcement action has been taken against artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence,” the ministry said in a statement.