GST collections touch record high at ₹1.68 lakh crore in April, says Centre

The Goods and Services Tax collection touched an all-time high of over ₹1.68 lakh crore in April, the ministry of finance said on Sunday, citing the improvement in economic activities.

The GST collection in April is ₹25,000 crore higher than that in March, which had the second-highest collection of ₹1.42 lakh crore, ANI reported. As per the ministry of finance, the gross GST revenue collected in April is ₹1,67,540 crore. Out of this, the central GST collected amonts to ₹33,159 crore, state GST worth ₹1,793 crore, integrated GST is ₹81,939 crore which also includes ₹36,705 crore collected on import of goods and the cess is ₹10,649 crore. The cess includes ₹857 crore collected on the import of goods.

The government said it has settled ₹33,423 crore to CGST and ₹26,962 crore to SGST from IGST.

"The total revenue of Centre and the States in the month of April 2022 after the regular settlement is ₹66,582 crore for CGST and ₹68,755 crore for the SGST," the finance ministry statement said.

The finance ministry said that revenues for the month of April are 20 per cent higher than the GST revenues in the same month last year.

"During the month, revenues from import of goods was 30 per cent higher and the revenues from the domestic transaction (including import of services) are 17 per cent higher than the revenues from these sources during the same month last year," they stated.

For the first time, the Ministry said, the gross GST collection has crossed ₹1.5 lakh crore mark.

"Total number of e-way bills generated in the month of March 2022 was 7.7 crore, which is 13 per cent higher than 6.8 crore e-way bills generated in the month of February 2022, which reflects the recovery of business activity at a faster pace," the release stated.

As per the Ministry, this shows clear improvement in the compliance behaviour, which has been a result of various measures taken by the tax administration to nudge taxpayers to file returns timely, to making compliance easier and smoother and strict enforcement action taken against errant taxpayers identified based on data analytics and artificial intelligence.