F M Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said that the enhanced revenue collection in the recent months should now be the new normal Commending taxmen for the enforcement measures in dealing with GST fraud. In a message to tax officers on the fourth anniversary of historic tax reform GST, she said in the last four years taxpayer base has doubled from 66.25 lakh to 1.28 crore and also added, for eight months in a row, GST revenues have crossed Rs 1 lakh crore mark and have seen record GST revenue collection of Rs 1.41 lakh crore in April 2021.
F M Sitharaman said that admirable work has been done in the year gone by both in the area of abetment and application with numerous cases of fraudulent dealers and ITC being registered. The inflated revenue collection in recent months should now be the new normal.
A nationwide GST that includes 17 local duties like excise duty, service tax, and VAT and 13 taxes was rolled out on July 1, 2017. the minister also thanked taxpayers for their support in making the goods and services tax (GST) a reality and Expressing satisfaction on overcoming most of the GST implementation challenges, including two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sitharaman said that “its affirmative outgrowth such as unified market, removal of falling, and improved competitiveness of goods and services has helped prompt economic growth taking us further on the path to wealth while praising both the central and state tax officers for making GST a great accomplishment.
Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) will be issuing certificates of appreciation to 54,439 GST payers for a cash payment of GST and timely filing of returns in the last four years. More than 88 percent of the taxpayers are from micro, small and medium enterprises. Sitharaman said, in a large and diverse country like India, any reform of this scale can be highly challenging.
Sitharaman added that the GST Council had shown immense sagacity and wisdom in redressing legitimate concerns of taxpayers and citizens by course correction whenever needed. This had demonstrated itself in the measures to ease the compliance burden on taxpayers, especially MSMEs, and in reducing the tax burden on the common man.
Under GST, a four-rate structure that levies a low rate of tax 5 percent on essential items and a top rate of 28 percent on cars is imposed. In the pre-GST era, the total of VAT, excise, CST, and their demonstration effect led to 31 percent as tax payable, on average, for a consumer.
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