NEW DELHI: The government collected Rs 5,934 crore as its part of the goods and services tax (GST) in April this financial year, fetching 87 per cent lower than Rs 46848 crore in the same month of the previous year.
The data pertains to economic activities in March. The dip in revenue collections is being attributed to the country being put under lockdown to contain the coronavirus from March 24 and return filing being deferred that month and then for April to June.
From the data, it is not possible to deduce overall GST collections since state GST (SGST) is usually higher than the Centre’s. For instance, the CGST stood at Rs 19,183 crore and SGST at Rs 25,601 crore in March.
Then, there is an issue of integrated GST (IGST) as it is not clear as to how much of it is allocated to the states. IGST stood at Rs 9749 crore in April. It was, however, much higher than minus Rs 564 crore in April of the previous year. The minus figure contains more allocations in the month to the states than collected by the Centre.
The government had earlier announced that the registered GST taxpayers with aggregated annual turnover less than Rs 5 crore can file GSTR-3B (summary input-output returns) due in March, April, and May 2020 by the last week of June 2020. For such taxpayers, no interest, late fee, and penalty were to be charged.
Those with an annual turnover of at least Rs 5 crore or more could file returns due in March, April, and May 2020 by last week of June 2020 but the same would attract a reduced rate of interest at 9 per cent per annum from the due date. The current interest rate is 18 per cent per annum. No late fee and penalty will be charged, if submitted till June 30 this year.
—Agencies

KR Desk