For the first time in the history of Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime since July 1 last year, the GST collection in April crossed the Rs 1 lakh-crore mark. With the optimism of good tax revenue, the Government expects an upswing in the economy and better compliance.
According to the Finance Ministry statement released on Tuesday, The total gross GST revenue collected in April 2018 is Rs 1,03,458 crore of which CGST is Rs 18,652 crore, SGST is Rs 25,704 crore, IGST is Rs 50,548 crore (including Rs 21,246 crore collected on imports) and Cess is Rs 8,554 crore - including Rs 702 crore collected on imports.
Commenting on the tax figures in April, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley expressed hope that the positive trend in collection of GST would continue. In March the figure was Rs 89,264 crore. The GST mop-up in the entire 2017-18 fiscal stood at Rs 7.41 lakh crore.
“Increased tax collections will help the nation to expand its economic horizons and take it to loftier heights,” Jaitley said.
Jaitley also tweeted that with the improved economic climate, introduction of e-way bill and improved GST compliance, the indirect collections would continue to show a positive trend. “GST collections in April exceeding Rs 1 lakh crore is a landmark achievement and a confirmation of increased economic activity as brought out by other reports,” he said.
The Finance Ministry further said that it is usually noticed that in the last month of a financial year, people also try to pay arrears of some of the previous months and, therefore, April 2018 revenue cannot be taken as trend for the future.
“The total revenue earned by the central and state governments, after settlement in April, is Rs 32,493 crore for Central GST and Rs 40,257 crore for State GST,” it added.
However, tax experts feel that the impact of e-way bill can be seen from the figures of GST revenue collection. “It was highly expected that e-way bill being the strong pillar of GST would raise the revenue after implementation as the chances of evasion would be reduced to significant extent after its rollout,” said Vishal Raheja of Taxmann.
Sharing his views on the indirect tax collections, Sandeep Chilana, Partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas said that with anti evasion mechanism such as e-way bills becoming mandatory from April 1 2018, it is expected that the 1 lakh crore benchmark would be sustainable in the coming months.
“As far as total number of GSTR 3B returns for March up to April 30 was concerned, nearly 69.5 per cent filed returns. As many as 60.47 lakh as against 87.12 lakh, who are eligible to file returns for March, did the needful,” it said, adding that April was also the month for filing of quarterly returns for composition dealers.
Out of 19.31 lakh composition dealers, 11.47 lakh have filed their quarterly return (GSTR 4) and have paid total tax of Rs 579 crore, which is included in Rs 1.03 lakh crore of total GST collection, the Ministry statement said.