GST Collections In January At Rs 1.56 Lakh Crore; 2nd-Highest Ever; Details Here

The gross GST collection in January 2023 stood at Rs 1.56 lakh crore, according to an official statement released on Tuesday. This is the second-highest-ever mop-up next only to the collection reported in April 2022, indicating an uptick in economic activity and increased tax compliance.

“The gross GST revenue collected in the month of January 2023 till 5:00 pm on 31.01.2023 is Rs 1,55,922 crore of which CGST is Rs 28,963 crore, SGST is Rs 36,730 crore, IGST is Rs 79,599 crore (including Rs 37,118 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is Rs 10,630 crore (including Rs 768 crore collected on import of goods),” the finance ministry said in a statement.

It added that this is for the third time, in the current financial year, GST collection has crossed Rs 1.50 lakh crore mark.

The government has settled Rs 38,507 crore to CGST and Rs 32,624 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement. In January 2023, the total revenue of the Centre and the states after regular settlement stood at Rs 67,470 crore for CGST and Rs 69,354 crore for the SGST.

Abhishek Jain, partner (indirect tax) at KPMG in India, said, “GST collections for the month of January have touched second all-time high, setting the perfect momentum for the Budget. Equally encouraging is that December saw the highest number of e-way bills getting generated, which clearly indicates an uptick in economic activity.”

He added that with the Economic Survey 2022-23 indicating that the taxpayer numbers have almost doubled from the initial 2017 numbers, it seems that such high GST collections can be expected to be normal for the coming months.

“The revenues in the current financial year till January 2023 now stand at 24 per cent higher than the GST revenues during the same period last year. The revenues for this period from import of goods are 29% higher and from domestic transaction (including import of services) are 22% higher than the revenues from these sources for the same period last year,” the ministry said.

During the month of December 2022, 8.3 crore e-way bills were generated, which is the highest so far and it was significantly higher than 7.9 crore e-way bills generated in November 2022.

Over the last year, various efforts have been made to increase the tax base and improve compliance. The percentage of filing of GST returns (GSTR-3B) and of the statement of invoices (GSTR-1), till the end of the month, has improved significantly over years. The trend in return filing in the Oct-Dec quarter over last few years is as shown in the graph below.

In the quarter Oct-Dec 2022, total 2.42 crore GST returns were filed till end of next month as compared to 2.19 crore in the same quarter in the last year.

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