November gross GST collections were Rs 1,31,526 crore, up 25% YoY from Rs 1,04,963 crore in the same month last year. This is higher than even the Rs 1,30,127 crore raised in October this year.
“The gross GST revenue in November 2021 is Rs 1,31,526 crore, of which CGST is Rs 23,978 crore, SGST is Rs 31,127 crore, IGST is Rs 66,815 crore (including Rs 32,165 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is Rs 9,606 crore (including Rs 653 crore collected on import of goods),” says a release from the Ministry of Finance.
“Collections have stabilised at a level which will enable government to cross the GST collection target for FY22,” says M.S. Mani, Partner, Deloitte India. “There has been a significant increase in GST surveillance activities in recent times based on data available with GSTN. These would have contributed, over and above economic growth, the key driver of collections,” he adds.
Rajat Bose, Partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas &Co, says November collections indicate robust economic growth. “The collections should continue to rise in months to come if we do not see another wave (of Covid-19) in the country,” he says.
Collections from major states are also up. Punjab, for example, has collected 32% more (Rs 1,845 crore as against Rs 1,396 crore in November last year). Odisha has seen a 69% jump to Rs 4,136 crore. Delhi has seen a 29% jump while collections from Gujarat and Karnataka are up 26% and 31%, respectively. UP revenue is up 20% and Rajasthan has seen a rise of 18%.
November collections are the second highest since the rollout of the indirect tax reform in July 2017. The record of Rs 1,39,708 crore was set in April this year. Monthly collections have remained above the crucial Rs 1,00,000 crore mark for five months in a row now.
The finance ministry maintains that a rise in collections is a result of compliance and administrative measures taken by the government. “Central tax enforcement agencies, along with state counterparts, have detected large tax evasion cases, mainly cases relating to fake invoices, with the help of various IT tools developed by GSTN that use return, invoice and e-way bill data to find suspicious taxpayers,” the ministry said in the release.
“A large number of initiatives undertaken in the last one year like enhancement of system capacity, nudging non-filers after last date of filing of returns, auto-population of returns, blocking of e-way bills and passing of input tax credit for non-filers has led to consistent improvement in filing of returns,” says the ministry.
