GST collections in FY18 touch `7.19tr

India collected `7.41 lakh crore in Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 2017-18 (July to March) the first year of its launch.

GST was rolled out the GST in July 2017 which subsumed 17 central and state taxes on sale of goods and rendering of services.

During FY18, total revenue collected under GST in the period between August 2017 and March 2018 has been `7.19 lakh crore. This includes `1.19 lakh crore of CGST, `1.72 lakh crore of SGST, `3.66 lakh crore of IGST (including `1.73 lakh crore on imports) and `62,021 crore of cess (including `5,702 crore on imports).

For this eight months, the average monthly collection has been `89,885 crore. 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 201718 stands provisionally at `7.41 lakh crore,” said finance ministry.

“The SGST collection during the year, including the settlement of IGST has been `2.91 lakh crore and the total compensation released to the states for a period of eight months during the last financial year was `41,147 crore to ensure that the revenue of the states is protected at the level of 14 per cent over the base year tax collection in 2015-16,” said the finance ministry.

It said that the revenue gap of each State is coming down over last eight months. The average revenue gap of all states for last year is around 17 per cent.