The GST collection in April touched the highest ever level of about Rs 1.68 lakh crore, up 20 per cent from the year-ago period, on improved compliance and recovery in business activity, the Finance Ministry said on Sunday. During the month, 1.06 crore GST returns from GSTR-3B were filed, of which 97 lakh pertained to March 2022. The gross GST revenue collected in April is Rs 1,67,540 crore, of which CGST is Rs 33,159 crore, SGST Rs 41,793 crore, IGST Rs 81,939 crore (including Rs 36,705 crore collected on import of goods) and cess Rs 10,649 crore (including Rs 857 crore collected on import of goods), the ministry said.
The gross GST collection in April 2022 is an all-time high and Rs 25,000 crore more than the previous highest collection of Rs 1.42 lakh crore recorded in March. In April last year, the mop-up from Goods and Services Tax (GST) was about Rs 1.40 lakh crore. Giving comparable data of April GST return filing, the ministry said there is a "clear improvement in the compliance behaviour, which has been a result of various measures taken by the tax administration to nudge taxpayers to file returns timely, to making compliance easier and strict enforcement action was taken against errant taxpayers identified based on data analytics and artificial intelligence".
During the month, revenues from import of goods were 30 per cent higher and the revenues from the domestic transaction (including import of services) are 17 per cent more than the revenues from these sources during the same month last year. The total number of e-way bills generated in March 2022 was 7.7 crore, which is 13 per cent higher than 6.8 crore in February 2022, which reflects the recovery of business activity at a faster pace, the ministry said. In April 2022, 84.7 per cent of registered businesses paid taxes by filing GSTR-3B, compared to 78.3 per cent in the year-ago period. Also, 83.11 per cent of GST registered businesses have filed supply or sales return GSTR-1, compared to 73.9 per cent a year ago.
The highest ever tax collection in a single day also happened on April 20 and Rs 57,847 crore was paid as GST through 9.58 lakh transactions. Deloitte India Partner MS Mani said while the GST collections in respect of March have always been high, the record collections of Rs 1.68 lakh crore reported are on account of multiple favourable factors, including the recent changes on permitting input tax credits only upon timely compliance by the vendors. "The impact of the continuing focus on ensuring timely compliance by all GST registrants by restricting the input tax credits of the buyers together with enhanced analytics to detect evasion has also contributed significantly to the all-time high collections reported," Mani said.
Tax Connect Advisory Partner Vivek Jalan said while the high collection depicts that the Indian Economy is coming out of the pandemic in full swing now, it is also a result of the tremendous price rise in input cost and implementation of GSTR 2B wherein the recipient can take only that much credit for input, input services and capital goods for which the supplier has filed his returns.