The Goods and services tax (GST) collection in January (for December) came in at over Rs 1 lakh crore, the finance ministry said in a tweet on Thursday, amid reports that the revenue shortfalls, primarily in GST, were impinging on its plan to contain the budget deficits. The GST collections exceeded the Rs 1-lakh-crore mark only twice in past — in April and in October.
Assuming the January mop-up to be exactly Rs 1 lakh crore, the monthly average collection for the April-January period would be Rs 97,120 crore, higher than the average of Rs 96,800 crore for the April-December period. However, even the new average is still a far cry from about Rs 1.1 lakh crore — the monthly overall (Centre-state) GST collection required for the Centre’s to meet its GST collection estimate for 2018-19.
The collection in February would likely be impacted by rate cuts on 17 goods and 6 services which were announced by the GST Council on December 22 and came into effect from January 1.
“This increase has been achieved despite various tax relief measures implemented by the GST Council to lower the tax burden on the consumers,” the ministry’s tweet said.
Pratik Jain, partner & leader, indirect tax, PwC India, said: “This again underlines that collections are increasing steadily as compliance is getting simplified, rates are getting reduced and administration is getting sharper. That said, it’s clear that overall collection for the entire year would be significantly lower than what was budgeted. It will be interesting to see whether the estimated collections in the next financial year would reflect the collection trend in the current year.”
