NEW DELHI: The government is expecting its goods and services tax collection in November to exceed the October revenue as e-way bills or electronic permits generated for goods transportation rose to an all time high.
“October collection was good but we expect November GST collection to exceed that. The reason for the optimism is the manufacturing sector has done well and we have seen e-way bill at all-time high of 73.5 million,” a senior official from the revenue department said.
The number of e-way bill was 71.2 million in March which resulted in the highest GST collection of Rs 1.41 lakh crore in April. Apart from the festive season, even manufacturing sector has seen highest growth in last 8 months.
GST collection stood at Rs 1.3 lakh crore in October for transactions in September, recording the second highest collection since the roll out of the GST regime in 2017. The collection was 24% higher than in October 2020, and up 36% over 2019-20.
The official added that it has made a special drive for tax evasion during the festive season. The tax department has already initiated several steps to discourage non-compliance, including measures such as blocking e-way bills for not filing returns, system-based suspension of registration of taxpayers who have failed to file six returns in a row, and blocking credit for return defaulters. A special drive to detect tax evasion was also launched.
“Apart from the demand driven collection, we have launched special drive to detect GST evasion during the festive season. This is resulting in better compliance,” the official added. “We forecast the GoI’s gross tax revenues to exceed the FY2022 Budget Estimate (BE) by at least Rs 2 lakh crore. Out of this, roughly Rs 1.4 lakh crore would be retained by the Union government, whereas Rs 600 billion (Rs 60,000 crore) would be shared with the states,” Aditi Nayar, chief economist ICRA, said.
Number of e-way bills hits 73.5 million
“October collection was good but we expect November GST collection to exceed that. The reason for the optimism is the manufacturing sector has done well and we have seen e-way bill at all-time high of 73.5 million,” a revenue department official said