GST Collections For March Touch All-Time High Of Rs 1.67 Lakh Crore

Central Excise & Service Tax HQ, Rajkot. (Source: CBIC Website)

The government's goods and service tax revenue collection for March, collected in April stood at Rs 1.67 lakh crore, surpassing all previous records.

In its statement on Sunday the Finance Ministry attributed the buoyant collections to better compliance and measures by the tax administration. "...it is a result of various measures taken by the tax administration to nudge taxpayers to file returns timely, to making compliance easier and smoother and strict enforcement action taken against errant taxpayers identified based on data analytics and artificial intelligence," the statement said.

The month's revenue collections are Rs 25,000 crore higher than March's collections which was touted as the highest ever at 1.42 lakh crore.

This is the first time the monthly collections have crossed the Rs 1.5 lakh crore mark.

Revenues for the month of April 2022 are 20% higher than the GST revenues in the same month last year. And revenues from import of goods was 30% higher, the statement added.

Total number of e-way bills generated in the month of March 2022 was 7.7 crore.

Break-Up Of GST Collections

Central GST: Rs 33,159 crore.

State GST: Rs 41,793 crore

Integrated GST: Rs 81,939 crore, including Rs 36,705 crore collected on import of goods.

Cess: Rs 10,649 crore, including Rs 857 crore collected on import of goods.

The highest single-day collection was recorded on April 20 between 4-5 P.M. "On 20^th April 2022, Rs 57,847 crore was paid through 9.58 lakh transactions and during 4-5 PM, almost Rs 8,000 crore was paid through 88,000 transactions," the statement said.

State Collections

State-wise, collections rose the most in Uttarakhand at 33% year-on-year to Rs 1,887 crore on a smaller base of Rs 1,422 crore.

GST collections for March remained above 20% for Haryana (22%), Odisha (28%), Andhra Pradesh (22%) and Maharashtra (25%).

Aditi Nayar, chief economist at ICRA sees it as a signal of healthy economic activity despite escalating geopolitical conflict.

"Even though the spike in the GST collections in April 2022 partly benefits from year end adjustments, the all time high magnitude of inflows is very enthusing, and augurs well for a robust year on year growth in the months ahead as well," she said.