Collection from Goods and Services Taxes (GST) in April surged to an all-time high of over ₹1.87-lakh crore, the Finance Ministry reported on Monday. Apart from economic recovery and improved compliance, year-end sales also helped boost the collection. The previous all-time high collection of ₹1.67-lakh crore was recorded in April 2022.

Hailing the achievement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “Great news for the Indian economy! Rising tax collection despite lower tax rates shows the success of how GST has increased integration and compliance.”

Experts say the collection to cross ₹2-lakh crore in the coming months. This will provide elbow room for the GST Council to lower rates in case inflation rises on account of OPEC+ production cuts and geopolitical reasons.

A statement issued by the Finance Ministry said that GST revenues for April 2023 are 12 per cent higher than April 2022.

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Also, this year, April saw the highest single-day collection of ₹68,228 crore through 9.8 lakh transactions on the 20th, the due date for filing the GSTR 3 Return Form (which shows actual tax payment after deducting input tax credit, or ITC, from gross tax liability).

e-way bills

The improvement in collection can also be gauged from e-way bills. “The total number of e-way bills generated in the month of March 2023 was 9 crore, which is 11 per cent higher than the 8.1 crore e-way bills generated in the month of February 2023,” the Ministry statement said.

Experts’ take

Commenting on the latest collection number, MS Mani, Partner with Deloitte India, said the record GST collections relate to the transactions during March 23, the closing month of FY23, where all organisations would have been keen to close the fiscal year on a high note.

“This comes on the back of the month’s GST collections crossing ₹1.4 lakh crore continuously during FY23 and hence is a testimony to the good economic growth and the enhanced efforts aimed at improving compliances,” he said.

Vivek Jalan, partner at Tax Connect Advisory, said statistically, the achievement is reasonable. According to him, the budget for 2023 has projected an uptick of 12 per cent in GST collections in FY24 compared to last financial year. If inflation is expected at 5.5 per cent and GDP growth at 6 per cent, then the indirect tax buoyancy budgeted is not even 1 per cent.

“The CBIC is expected to achieve more, which it has not done in April 2023, wherein the growth in GST collections was exactly 12 per cent. Possibly we could expect more activity in terms of automated scrutiny, etc. in the rest of FY24 to stay on par with the budget,” he said.

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