Govt tax collection gets bumper start: India's first GST revenue of Rs 92, 200 crore explained

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday released the country's maiden GST revenue data that surpassed government's internal expectation of Rs 91,000 crore revenue and recorded tax collection of Rs 92,283 crore from just 64.42 per cent of the total taxpayer base. This tax collections are for July and the numbers are likely to go up when all the tax payers file returns.

GST REVENUE EXPLAINED IN NUMBERS

As on August 29, 38.38 lakh taxpayers accounting for 64.42 per cent of the total businesses filed their returns. As per registration, 59.57 lakh businesses should file return for July. The total revenue of GST paid under different heads is Rs 92,283 crore.

The total Central GST revenue is Rs 14,894 crore, State GST revenue is Rs 22,722 crore, Integrated GST revenue is Rs 47,469 crore. The IGST revenue of Rs 47,469 would be apportioned between the Centre and states based where the taxes were due.

If budget estimates are extrapolated to arrive at a monthly collection number, the Centre should have got Rs 48,000 crore and all states put together another Rs 43,000 crore. In July of last year, Rs 31,782 crore of excise duty and Rs 19,600 crore of service tax were collected.

The revenue under IGST will be allocated between the CGST and the SGST to the extent that the same is used for payment of CGST/SGST. This exercise will be done based on the cross-utilisation report to be received from the GSTN. Exact revenue figures of the Central and the State governments respectively will be known after this exercise is complete before the end of this month.

Out of total 72.33 lakh taxpayers, 58.53 lakh taxpayers have completely migrated to the GSTN and 13.80 lakh taxpayers are yet to complete their procedural formalities to migrate to the GSTN. The number of new taxpayers who have registered with the GSTN upto 29th August, 2017 was 18.83 lakhs.

NITI AAYOG ON GST

The government's highest planning body Niti Aayog recently said that due to an efficient tax system post-GST, tax revenue is expected to grow (in a baseline scenario) to Rs 26.48 lakh crore by 2019-20 from Rs 17.03 lakh crore in 2016-17. It predicts a 14 per cent growth in 2017-18, followed by 16 per cent and 17 per cent in the next two financial years. It further predicts the indirect tax buoyancy to grow from 1.06 per cent in 2017-18 to 1.11 per cent in 2018-19 and 1.17 per cent in 2019-20.

Niti Aayog's the three-year action agenda expects the gross tax revenues to GDP ratio to increase to 12.3 per cent by 2019-20, compared to 11.2 per cent in 2016-17. The forecast of direct tax to GDP ratio is 5.8 per cent, 6.0 per cent and 6.3 per cent in 2017-18, 2018-19, and 2019-20 respectively. The indirect tax to GDP ratio is likely to rise to 5.7 per cent, 5.8 per cent and 5.9 per cent in 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20, respectively, compared to in 2016-17 is 5.6 per cent.