The government collected Rs 5,934 crore as its portion of the goods and services tax (GST) in the month of April this financial year, collating 87 per cent lower than Rs 46848 crore in the same month of the previous year. It is also said that, central goods and services tax (CGST) stood at Rs 19,183 crore and state goods and services tax SGST at Rs 25,601 crore in March.
The downfall in collection of revenue is being imputed to the country being kept under lockdown to fight the COVID-19 pandemic from March 24 and return filing being adjourned.
There also lies an issue wherein, the collated GST does not show a clear statistics as to how much of it is allocated to the states. integrated goods and services tax (IGST) stood at Rs 9749 crore in April. It was, indeed, much higher than downside Rs 564 crore in April of the previous year. The downside figure contains more allocations in the month to the states than collected by the Centre, according to sources.
According to the reports, the government had previously announced that the registered GST taxpayers with a total annual income less than Rs 5 crore can file GSTR-3B (summary input-output returns) which is due in March, April, and May 2020 by the end week of June 2020. Such taxpayers will not have to bear, interest rates, late fee charges, and penalty.