Goods & Services Tax (GST) collections in the month of July touched around ₹1.49 lakh crore. This is 28 per cent higher than corresponding month of 2021 and second all-time highest collection.

Collection in June was over ₹1.44 lakh crore

“For five months in a row now, the monthly GST revenues have been more than ₹ 1.4 lakh crore showing a steady increase every month. The growth in GST revenue till July 2022 over the same period last year is 35 per cent and this reflects a very high buoyancy. This is a clear impact of various measures taken by the Council in the past to ensure better compliance. Better reporting coupled with economic recovery has been having positive impact on the GST revenues on a consistent basis,” a statement issued by the Finance Ministry said.

Gross revenue break-up

The gross GST revenue collected in July was ₹1,48,995 crore of which CGST is ₹25,751 crore, SGST is ₹32,807 crore, IGST is ₹79,518 crore (including ₹41,420 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is ₹10,920 crore (including ₹995 crore collected on import of goods). During the month of June 2022, 7.45 crore e-way bills were generated, which was marginally higher than 7.36 crore in May 2022.

MS Mani, Partner, Deloitte India says the new normal of ₹ 1.4 lakh crore seen during the past few months accompanied by the fact that all major States have shown a growth in excess of 15 per cent over the last year, indicates that economic activities have stabilised and leakages have been plugged. The uptick in GST collections over the past few months would provide some comfort to States which have just come out of the guaranteed compensation period and are concerned about their revenue mobilisation abilities.

“For business, there is expectation of an enhanced focus on audits and assessments as the GST authorities at both the Central and State level work on improving GST collections further,” he said.

Vivek Jalan, Partner, Tax Connect Advisory, The GST Collection target for FY 22-23 as derived from the Government Budgets for 2022 was around ₹ 12.5 lakh crore and already in 5 months ₹7.5 lakh crore has been achieved. Considering that the next 5 months are going to be festive months and historically the average revenues in these five months are almost equal to the first five months, it seems that GST Revenues this fiscal year would beat budget expectations by more than 40 per cent.

Revenue targets likely

It’s important to note that States would no more be compensated by the Centre for a shortfall in the revenues and hence we have already started seeing the SGST Departments of States too get aggressive in collection drive.  “It is understood that revenue targets have been set for the state officers also which they would now try to achieve. Again it is important to note that even if a dealer is registered with the Centre, the State can still investigate it on a specific issue and vice-versa,” he said.

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