India collected Rs 7.41 trillion in taxes in the first year of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) with revenues for a good part of four months not being accounted for because of the mid-year rollout and an accounting lag.
The government had last reported a GST collection of Rs 7.17 trillion for the first eight months since the new tax regime that subsumed 17 central and state taxes on sale of goods and rendering of services was rolled out in July.
For the period ending March 31, 2018, the GST collection has been put at Rs 7.41 trillion, a finance ministry statement said.
The mere Rs 240 billion addition shown for March as against an average monthly collection of Rs 890 billion in the previous eight months indicated government desire to move to more current accounting methodology. At present, GST collections are accounted for only when returns after filed by the third week of the following month.
From 2018-19 fiscal year that began this month, the government is shifting to a cash basis of accounting where revenues accrued at the completion of a month would be taken on record. Accordingly collection for April is likely to be released on May 1.
“During 2017-18, total revenue collected under GST in the period between August 2017 and March 2018 has been Rs 7.19 trillion.
“This includes Rs 1.19 trillion of CGST, Rs 1.72 trillion of SGST, Rs 3.66 trillion of IGST (including Rs 1.73 trillion on imports) and Rs 620.21 billion of cess (including Rs 57.02 billion on imports),” the statement said.
At the end of March, the Centre has Rs 200 billion in its cess pool, which will be utilised to compensate the states for revenue loss, an official said.
Under GST, the tax levied on consumption of goods or rendering of service is split 50:50 between the Centre and the states. Such tax is known as Central-GST or CGST and State-GST or SGST.
On inter-state movement of goods as well as imports, an Integrated-GST or IGST is levied, which accrues to the Centre. A cess is levied on top of these taxes on sin and luxury goods which make up for the compensation kitty used to make good of any revenue shortfall faced by states on implementation of GST.
“While the tax on domestic supplies in a month is collected through the process of returns and gets collected in the next month, IGST and cess on imports gets collected in the same month.
“Therefore, during the current year, GST on domestic supplies has been collected only in eight months from August 2017 to March 2018, IGST and cess on imports has been collected for nine months, from July 2017 to March 2018. Including the collection of July 2017, the total GST collection during the financial year 2017-18 stands provisionally at Rs 7.41 trillion,” the statement said.
