All done and dusted, GST drops in 7.14 lakh Cr in Centre’s kitty for the FY 2018
New Delhi, April 28: When the news of GST augmented, the whole nation kept wondering if this tactics of the Modi government will work. And standing by their words, the financial year, the government mobilized Rs 7.41 lakh crore from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) during 2017-18.
The government rolled out the GST regime from 1 July last year. Goods and services tax (GST) collections averaged just under Rs 90,000 crore a month in the first eight months after the rollout of the levy, adding up to Rs 7.19 lakh crore in the year ended March amid a steady improvement in compliance.
In a tweet Finance Minister Arun Jaitely tweeted, "During the year 2017-18, total revenue collections under GST in the period between August 2017 and March 2018 has been Rs 7.19 lakh crore. Including the collection of July, 2017, the total GST collections during the 2017-18 stand provisionally at Rs. 7.41 lakh crore.”
This includes Rs 1.19 lakh crore of CGST, Rs.1.72 lakh crore of SGST, and Rs 3.66 lakh crore of IGST (including Rs 1.73 lakh crore on imports) and Rs 62,021 crore of cess (including Rs 5,702 crore on imports).
The average monthly collection has been Rs 89,885 crore during the August-March period. Pertaining to the states, for the period of eight months during 2017-18, the total compensation was figured out to be Rs 41,147 crore to ensure that the revenue of the states is protected at the level of 14 percent over the base year tax collection in 2015-16.
The revenue gap of each state is coming down over the last eight months, it said, adding the Average Revenue Gap of all the states for the last year is around 17%.
“Given the fact that it was the launch year, the focus was on stabilisation of the system. However, from the current fiscal, the focus will be on compliance and also on smoothening the rough ends. We expect the collection in this fiscal year to go up substantially,” said a senior official in the ministry. The government has also collected Rs 20,000 crore in its cess pool, which will be utilised to compensate the states for revenue loss.