In a first for the Indian government, the revenue collection for the Goods and Services tax exceeded Rs 1 lakh crore in a single month. This revenue figure was clocked for April, as claimed by the Finance Ministry:
GST Revenue collection for April 2018 exceeds Rs.1 lakh crore.
— Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) May 1, 2018
As per a press release issued by the Finance Ministry, Rs.1,03,458 crore was collected in April 2018. The breakup of this figure is in the form of, Rs 18,652 crore for CGST, Rs.25,704 crore as SGST, Rs. 50,548 crore as IGST – which includes 21,246 crore collected on imports and a Cess of Rs 8554 crore.
The number of GSTR 3B returns filed for the month of March were clocked at 60.47 lakh as of 30 April, against a total of 87.12 lakh possible returns. This number comes out to be 69.5% of total returns required to be filed.
When it comes to filing of quarterly returns for the total 19.31 lakh Composition Dealers, 11.47 lakh of them filed the said GSTR 4 return which resulted in a tax collection of Rs 579 crore.
After settlements, the total revenue which was earned by the Central and State governments in April stood at, Rs.32,493 crore and Rs 40,257 crore respectively.
As per the finance ministry, this tax revenue reflected better compliance and upswing in the economy. The ministry though cautioned that such a revenue increase might not turn out to be a trend, as in the last month of the financial year people try to clear the amount owed by them in previous months.
Going by an Economic Times report, the Finance Ministry has earned about Rs 7.19 lakh crores as via GST from August 2017 to March 2018.
Probably following such revenues, the GST council has set a target of Rs 12 trillion as revenues for the current financial, which in Indian numeral system translates to Rs 12 lakh crores, as reported by Mint.
This as per the report, would be possible thanks to the higher GST revenue and the introduction of the e-way bill which was introduced on 1 April.
