GST Collections Cross Rs 1 Lakh Crore Mark In September

The goods and services tax collection for September improved from previous month and crossed the Rs 1 lakh crore mark.

That compares with the Rs 94,442-crore revenue from GST paid for August, according to a Finance Ministry statement. The rise in collection can be attributed to a reduction in tax rates, higher compliance and negligible interference of tax officials, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in a tweet.

• Note: From July-Sept 2017, numbers were updated on Oct. 31, 2017; from Nov 2017 to Feb 2018, numbers were released on 24/25/26th of the following month; and from March 2018 till Sept 2018, numbers were released on the last day of the following month.

Total GSTR-3B returns filed for September as on Oct. 31 rose to 67.45 lakh from 67 lakh in August, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Finance. The last day for paying GST for September was Oct. 25.

Tax collected under various heads:

• Central GST stood at Rs 16,464 crore.
• State GST at Rs 22,826 crore.
• Integrated GST stood at Rs 53,419 crore.
• Compensation cess was at Rs 8,000 crore.

The central government will equally split Rs 30,000 crore of unclaimed or unsettled integrated GST between states and itself provisionally, the release said. In June, the government was given powers to provisionally settle the integrated GST collected in a financial year as per recommendations of the GST Council.

The rise in revenue collection during the month can also be due to increased demand during the festive season, Krishan Arora, indirect tax partner at Grant Thornton India LLP, told BloombergQuint. He said it would be interesting to see the trend over the next couple of months with better compliance and implementation of effective tax evasion measures.

Abhishek Jain, indirect tax partner at EY India, however, said a possible reason for an increase in revenue could be closing adjustments for financial year 2017-18. Any changes that had to be made in GST payment for financial year 2017-18 could be done by Oct 25, he said. The trend, Jain said, could continue with the implementation of anti-evasion measures like tax deducted at source and tax collected at source.

Kerala, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra, according to the Finance Ministry's statement, achieved extraordinary growth in total tax collected.