On GST day, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman says enhanced tax collection is 'new normal'
This year on GST Day, the fourth anniversary of the tax reform, India commended tax officers in dealing with GST fraud and said that in the last four years the taxpayer base has almost doubled from 66.25 lakh to 1.28 crore.
India is marking 'GST Day' on Thursday, i.e. July 1 to mark the completion of four years since the rollout of the historic tax reform. Speaking on the occasion, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said that enhanced revenue collection under the new tax regime should be considered as the "new normal". The finance ministry is on this day issuing certificates of appreciation to 54,439 GST payers for timely filing of returns and a cash payment of the tax. More than 88% of these taxpayers are from micro, small and medium enterprises.
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This year on GST Day, the fourth anniversary of the tax reform, India commended tax officers in dealing with GST fraud and said that in the last four years the taxpayer base has almost doubled from 66.25 lakh to 1.28 crore.
"Commendable work has been done in the year gone by both in the area of facilitation and enforcement with numerous cases of fraudulent dealers and ITC being registered. The enhanced revenue collection in recent months should now be the new normal," Sitharaman said.
GST revenue collection in India has remained over the ₹100,000 crore mark for eight months in a row with as much as ₹102,702 collected in the month of May alone, the Union ministry of finance had said earlier last month. Today, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman pointed out that a record GST revenue collection of ₹1.41 lakh crore was seen in April 2021. This is despite the fact that several states continued to remain under strict coronavirus disease (Covid-19)-imposed lockdown, the government said.
Also Read | Four years of GST: Success, or not quite?
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is an indirect, multi-stage, comprehensive tax in India, imposed on the supply of goods and services. On its roll-out on July 1, 2017, the GST subsumed almost all the other domestic indirect taxes (petroleum, alcoholic beverages, and stamp duty are the major exceptions) in the country under one head, and is perhaps the biggest tax reform in the history of independent India. The GST is imposed at every step of the production process but is collected from the point of consumption, refunding all parties eventually other than the final consumer.
