September’19 GST Collection Records Lowest Since a Year

The Ministry of Finance released the figures of GST collection for September 2019. The stated gross collection stood at Rs 91,916 crore. 

The break-up of the above figure among the various tax heads is as follows:

• CGST–Rs 16,630 crore
• SGST–Rs 22,598 crore
• IGST–Rs 45,069 crore (inclusive of IGST on imports amounting to Rs 22,097 crore)
• Cess–Rs 7,620 crore (inclusive of cess on imports amounting to Rs 728 crore)

A PIB press release dated 1 October 2019 specified a decline in the tax collection by 2.67% as compared to the corresponding month in the previous year. The collection of September 2018 stood at Rs 94,442 crore. Interestingly, the economic slowdown has been a rising issue across the country for over a year. At this juncture, we see that the GST revenue has been dwindling month-on-month for three consecutive months. For August 2019, it fell by Rs 3,881 crore in comparison to July 2019. Similarly, it fell further by Rs 6,286 crore in September 2019, when compared to its previous month.

The press release stated “During April-September 2019 vis-à-vis 2018, the domestic component has grown by 7.82%. While GST on imports has shown negative growth, the total collection has grown by 4.90%.”

Also Read: Huge GST Revenue Loss During E-Commerce Festival Sales

With the new GST Return compliance pushed to the next fiscal, taxpayers must continue to file under the present set of GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B. As a result, there seems to be no change or new challenges in the return filing process, barring some technical glitches that remain. 

Moreover, the GST Council has consciously worked out a reduction in GST rates for certain non-priority items that did not have a substantial bearing on the revenue. In other words, the falling demand affecting the consumption volume may have triggered the revenue drop.

Further, the revenue figures for October 2019 turns out to be crucial; industry experts and the government are looking forward to it. The month of October 2019 marks the beginning of the festive season with Dussehra and Diwali at the edge and runs up to the end of December 2019 with Christmas and New Year. The festive season marks a higher demand during the financial year; it may lead to a higher revenue collection during the period. You must know that the revenue collections were Rs 1,00,710 crore for October 2018. 

FM Nirmala Sitharaman and her team are persistently making efforts to plug the slowdown in the Indian economy with the weekly press meets. Meanwhile, RBI’s fourth bi-monthly monetary policy for 2019-20 is expected to come out with impactful decisions on Friday, 4 October 2019.

For any clarifications/feedback on the topic, please contact the writer at annapoorna.m@cleartax.in.