The Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection has reached an all-time high of Rs 1.68 lakh crore in April, 2022. Giving this information in a statement on Sunday, the Finance Ministry said that GST collection figures have improved due to improvement in tax compliance. A total of 1.06 crore GST returns were filed in GSTR-3B in April, 2022. Of these, 97 lakh returns are for March 2022.
GST collection has increased by 20 percent in April 2022 as compared to April 2021. The GST collection in April 2021 stood at Rs 1.40 lakh crore. The ministry said that the gross GST collection reached a record Rs 1.68 lakh crore in April. This is an increase of about Rs 25,000 crore from the previous high of Rs 1.42 lakh crore in March 2022.
The ministry said that the gross GST collection in April stood at Rs 1,67,540 crore. Of this, the share of Central GST (CGST) was Rs 33,159 crore, the share of State GST (SGST) was Rs 41,793 crore and the share of Integrated GST (IGST) was Rs 81,939 crore. 36,705 crore in IGST was collected on import of goods.
In this, the share of cess stood at Rs 10,649 crore (Rs 857 crore was collected on import of goods). According to the ministry, there are clear indications that the level of compliance has improved. The tax administration has taken several measures in this regard, which are yielding positive results. The department has also facilitated tax compliance by motivating the taxpayers to file their returns on time.
The ministry said that in the month under review, revenue from import of goods was up 30 per cent over the same month last year, while revenue from domestic transactions (import of services) was up 17 per cent. A total of 7.7 crore e-way bills were generated in March 2022. This is 13 percent more than the figure of 68 million in February 2022. The ministry said that these figures show improvement in business activities.
In April 2022, 84.7 per cent of the total registered companies or entities filed GSTR-3B. This figure was 78.3 percent in the same month a year ago. Apart from this, 83.11 per cent of the GST registered units filed supply or sales return GSTR-1. A year ago this number was 73.9 percent. The highest tax collection in a single day was achieved on April 20. GST of Rs 57,847 crore was paid through 9.58 lakh transactions on that day.
MS Mani, Partner, Deloitte India said that the GST collection in April is always higher as compared to March. But this time there are many favorable factors for record collection in April. One of these factors pertains to changes in allowing input tax credit only in case of timely compliance by vendors. Vivek Jalan, Partner, Tax Connect Advisory, said that the high collection of GST shows that the Indian economy is recovering from the impact of the pandemic and growing rapidly. Apart from this, huge value addition in the cost of production and implementation of GSTR-2B has helped in increasing the GST revenue.