GST collection rises to all-time high of Rs 1.42 lakh cr in March

New Delhi, Apr 1 (PTI) GST collection in March touched an all-time high of over Rs 1.42 lakh crore, an increase of 15% annually, on the back of rate rationalisation and anti-evasion steps, the finance ministry said on Friday.

With the record collection, the Centre's Goods and Services Tax (GST) mop-up has exceeded the revised budget target of Rs 5.70 lakh crore set for the previous fiscal ended March 31, 2022.

The previous high for collection of revenues from goods sold and services rendered was in January 2022 at over Rs 1.40 lakh crore.

The average monthly gross GST collection in the last quarter (January-March) stood at Rs 1.38 lakh crore, against the average collection of Rs 1.10 lakh crore, Rs 1.15 lakh crore and 1.30 lakh crore in the first, second and third quarters, respectively.

"Coupled with economic recovery, anti-evasion activities, especially action against fake billers have been contributing to the enhanced GST. The improvement in revenue has also been due to various rate rationalization measures undertaken by the Council to correct inverted duty structure," the ministry said in a statement.

The gross GST revenue collected in March 2022 was Rs 1,42,095 crore, of which Central GST was Rs 25,830 crore, State GST Rs 32,378 crore, Integrated GST Rs 74,470 crore (including Rs 39,131 crore collected on import of goods) and cess was Rs 9,417 crore (including Rs 981 crore collected on import of goods).

During the month, revenues from import of goods were 25 per cent higher while the revenues from domestic transactions (including import of services) were 11 per cent higher than the revenues from these sources in March 2021.

Total number of e-way bills generated in the month of February 2022 was 6.91 crore as compared to 6.88 crore in January 2022 despite being a shorter month, which indicates recovery of business activity at faster pace, the ministry said.

The government has settled Rs 29,816 crore to Central GST and Rs 25,032 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement. In addition, the government has settled Rs 20,000 crore of IGST on ad-hoc basis in the ratio of 50:50 between Centre and states/UTs in March.

"The total revenue of Centre and the States in the month of March 2022 after regular and ad-hoc settlements is Rs 65,646 crore for CGST and Rs 67410 crore for the SGST. Centre also released GST compensation of Rs 18,252 crore to States/UTs during the month," the ministry said.

Deloitte India Partner M S Mani said the record GST collections have also been aided by the strong sales activity of corporates in March, as they raced to close the fiscal with high topline growth. This had a direct bearing on GST, which is a transaction tax.

"While state-wise variations exist in terms of the growth in GST collections, it would be interesting to see an analysis linking the state-wise GDP growth with the GST collections during the same period," Mani said.

NA Shah Associates Partner Parag Mehta said with further reduction in e-invoicing limits to Rs 20 crore from Rs 50 crore, there is bound to be substantial increase even in subsequent months.

"Further in the month of March normally there is also a exercise being conducted by trade to regularise the mistakes etc and deposit the taxes which leads to higher recovery," Mehta added.

The gross mop-up in April 2021 was over Rs 1.39 lakh crore, May (Rs 97,821 crore), June (Rs 92,800 crore), July (over Rs 1.16 lakh crore), August (over Rs 1.12 lakh crore), September (over Rs 1.17 lakh crore), October (over Rs 1.30 lakh crore), November (Rs 1.31 lakh crore), December (over Rs 1.29 lakh crore), January (Rs 1.40 lakh crore) and February (Rs 1.33 lakh crore).