Number of GST return filers up 65% to 11.3 mn in 5 years: Finance ministry

The number of GST return filers rose about 65 per cent to 11.3 million in 5 years till April 2023 as compliance by taxpayers improved, the finance ministry said on Sunday.

Also, the number of active taxpayers registered under GST increased from 10.6 million as of April 2018, to 14 million.

As per data shared by the ministry, 90 per cent of eligible taxpayers are filing GSTR-3B returns by the end of the filing month in current fiscal year, up from 68 per cent in 2017-18, the first year of GST rollout.

"Simplification in Rules and Procedure in GST has resulted in increase in return filing percentage by eligible taxpayers," the ministry said in a post on X.

A nationwide Goods and Services Tax (GST) was rolled out on July 1, 2017. It subsumed over a dozen local taxes like excise, service tax and VAT.

The number of GSTR-3B filers increased from 7.24 million in April 2018, to 11.3 million  as of April 2023.

GSTR-3B is the monthly return form for filing outward supplies details and tax payment.

"With effective policy and systemic changes in GST, the compliance level in GST return filing has improved over the years," the ministry said in another post on X.

Increase in return filing across the years indicates improvement in compliance level, the ministry added.

Monthly collection from GST came in at Rs 1.68 trillion in November. It is for the sixth time that gross GST collection has crossed Rs 1.60 trillion mark in current fiscal.

The Goods and Services Tax collection has been showing an upward trend on an annual basis since its rollout on July 1, 2017, and the average gross monthly mop-up in the current fiscal so far is Rs 1.66 trillion, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said in the Lok Sabha earlier this month.

The collection had touched a record Rs 1.87 trillion in April.