Comments
Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenues collected in November this year came in at ₹97,637 crore, lower than anticipated levels for the month. In October, GST revenues surpassed the ₹1 lakh crore mark to touch ₹1,00,710 crore.
The latest GST collections print is an indicator that the festive season has not boosted GST revenues and could present some worries for the policy makers given that the collections need to be much higher if the fiscal targets set for current fiscal are to be met on the indirect taxes side, said GST experts.
Of the total gross GST revenue of ₹97,637 crore collected in the month of November, CGST is ₹16,812 crore, SGST is ₹ 23,070 crore, IGST is ₹49,726 crore (including ₹24,133crore collected on imports) and Cess is ₹8,031 crore(including ₹842 crore collected on imports). The total number of GSTR 3B Returns filed for the month of October up to November 30, 2018 is 69.6 lakh.
The government has settled ₹18,262 crore to CGST and ₹15,704 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement. The total revenue earned by Central Government and the State Governments after regular settlement in the month of November, 2018 is ₹35,073 crore for CGST and ₹38,774 crore for the SGST. As much as ₹11,922 crore has been released to the states as GST compensation for the months of August-September, 2018, an official release said.
Reacting to the latest GST numbers, M.S.Mani, Partner, Deloitte India told BusinessLine that the lower than expected GST collections during this fiscal including November provides very little elbow room for any further rate reductions in the current fiscal, considering the need to stick to the fiscal deficit targets.
Pratik Jain, Partner, National Leader, Indirect Tax, PwC India, said:”The monthly collections have now stabilized between Rs 95,000 to 1,00,000 crores. Given that this is short of expectations, Government will have to work on measures to enhance the revenues like more granular use of data analytics & further tightening of tax administration. It will be interesting to see if GST council still recommends further rationalization of rates in next few months”.
Abhishek A Rastogi, Partner Khaitan & Company, a law firm, said: “It appears that the collections now will be around Rs 100,000 crore with the deviation of 5 per cent.. The more important fact which needs to be looked into is pending refund claims including the budgetary support refunds. The government should focus on resolving certain key issues impacting industry and at the same time improve the tax compliance so that the collections do not dip”.
Abhishek Jain, Tax Partner, EY says:”While the GST collections have shrinked vis-a-vis the earlier month, but is higher than the average monthly collection in the year. This steady increase in average collection brings a gleam of hope for a regular monthly collection of Rs 1 lakh crore being met soon”
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.