July GST collections target exceed with 64% compliance: Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the government has collected Rs 92,283 crore as Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue for the first month of its roll-out, exceeding the target while 21.19 lakh taxpayers are yet to file returns.

"Till today morning, 38.38 lakh, which is 64.42 per cent of eligible taxpayers have complied. If we take total amount of GST that has come for July till 10 a.m. on Tuesday, it is Rs 92,283 crore," Jaitley said here at a media briefing.

The taxpayers who are yet to file returns will have to bear a penalty of Rs 200 per day - Rs 100 for CGST and Rs 100 for SGST, Jaitley said.

Excluding those who registered in August and those who have opted for Composition Scheme, the total number of taxpayers registered for the month of July is 59.57 lakh, who should be filing returns, he said.

"This number will keep on increasing. As of today there are 59.57 lakh people should have paid tax for July," he said.

The last date to file the first GST returns was August 25 and for those claiming transactional credit was August 28.

The Finance Minister said that as per the stated tax collection targets for July, the amount due to the Centre is Rs 48,000 crore, and for the states, the corresponding figure is Rs 43,000 crore.

"The combined target for Centre and states revenue per month is thus Rs 91,000 crore, which has to be met. We have already exceeded target with 64.42 per cent taxpayers," he said.

"In the sum total of revenue we seem to be comfortable, but we will have to break up the figures to see if any particular state has not had revenue at the growth rate of 14 per cent, and that particular state will have to be compensated," he added.

The Finance Minister noted that not many people thought the revenue collection will exceed target in the first month itself.

"But we need to wait for few more months to study the pattern. More efficient tax system checks evasion and brings non-filers into system," he said.

The Rs 92,283 crore GST revenue is a gross figure, which includes Central GST of Rs 14,894 crore, State GST of Rs 22,722 crore and Integrated GST of Rs 47,469 crore (of which IGST from imports is Rs 20,964 crore) and cess is Rs 7,198 crore (of which Rs 599 crore is compensation cess from imports).

IGST will be allocated between Centre and states.

As far as GST registrations are concerned, a total of 72.33 lakh taxpayers have migrated from the previous indirect tax regime, Jaitley said.

The new registrations apart from this have gone up to 18.83 lakh, he said.

--IANS

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