Centre, state govts collect ₹90,669 cr as GST in Aug
NEW DELHI: Union and state governments collected ₹90,669 crore as goods and service tax (GST) in August, 3.6% less than what was collected in July, the first month of the indirect tax reform, as businesses and traders attempted to settle down in the new system. A finance ministry statement on Tuesday said these receipts do not include taxes from over a million small assessees who have opted a liberal quarterly tax payment system.
Only a little more than half of the 6.8 million assessees who were required to remit taxes and file returns met the deadline, said the statement. It implies that either the actual receipts may go up further as many who missed the last date opt for paying taxes with interest, or many taxpayers who got migrated from the earlier tax system to GST are not required to pay.
Businesses with at least ₹20 lakh turnover are required to pay GST, a threshold higher than the ₹10 lakh that existed earlier for service tax and ₹5-10 lakh that existed for VAT. An automatic migration of all taxpayers from the earlier system to the new one would mean that some of the registered GST payers may eventually forfeit their registration since they do not reach the ₹20 lakh threshold.
Some experts said the low level of compliance needs to be studied. Abhishek A Rastogi, a partner at law firm Khaitan & Co called it an “alarming fact.” “The government should go to the root cause and analyse whether these assesses are facing some genuine problems or they have been migrated automatically and are not required to comply,” he said.
In August, the Centre’s share of GST stood at ₹14,402 crore while states collected ₹21,067 crore. Integrated GST or IGST which is collected on inter-state commerce and imports stood at ₹47,377 crore. Of this, imports accounted for ₹23,180 crore.
“The above figures obviously do not include the GST to be paid by 10.24 lakh assessees who have opted for the composition scheme (meant for small taxpayers). Additionally, there are still a number of assessees who have not filed their return either for July or August, 2017,” said the ministry statement.
Abhishek Jain, tax partner at consulting firm EY India, said it was too early to hazard a guess on overall GST collections as many taxpayers have still not paid GST.