GST Collection Crosses Rs 1 Lakh-Crore-Mark In April

The goods and services tax collection for April declined to around Rs 1 lakh crore after surging to a record a month ago. This is the first time that GST collections have stayed above the Rs 1 lakh crore mark for three consecutive months.

The mop-up for April rose 6.7 percent over the previous year to Rs 1,00,289 crore, according to a statement by the Ministry of Finance. GST revenue for April, collected in May, was 2.21 percent higher than the monthly average of Rs 98,114 crore in FY19, as per the statement.

The number of GST returns filed during the month marginally improved over the previous month. The total number of GSTR-3B returns filed for the month of April by May 31 were 72.45 lakh compared with 72.13 lakh filed for March and 75.95 lakh for February.

While there's a slight dip from GST revenue for the previous month, it's encouraging to see a rather steady collection trend over the last three months, considering April being the beginning of the financial year, Krishan Arora, a tax partner at Grant Thornton India LLP, told BloombergQuint. The increase in tax collections could be due to anti-evasion steps undertaken by government to plug revenue leakages, he said.

Break-up of tax collected under various heads:

• Central GST—Rs 17,811 crore.
• State GST—Rs 24,462 crore.
• Integrated GST—Rs 49,891 crore.
• Compensation Cess—Rs 8,125 crore.

Integrated GST is settled between the states and centre, based on consumption in the respective state. From the IGST collected during the month, Rs 18,098 crore was transferred as central GST and Rs 14,438 crore was settled as SGST. Total revenue earned by central and state governments after the settlement was Rs 35,909 crore and Rs 38,900 crore, respectively, the statement said.

The continuing trend of GST collections remaining above 1 lakh crore signifies reaping benefits of this new tax regime, said Abhishek Jain, an indirect tax partner at EY India.

“While last two months had witnessed higher growth on account of year-end collections, the year-on-year increase in tax collections in the same month last year signifies good growth,” Jain said.

The central government has also released Rs 18,934 crore to the states as GST compensation for February and March. The central government compensates states for losses they incur in the first year of implementation of the indirect tax regime.