There is good news for the goods and services tax (GST) collections in November, but equally bad for those in December. The GST collections rose to the second highest Rs 1.3 trillion in October. The government expects this record to be broken soon. In fact, e-way bills in October give a rough idea that GST collections may be higher in November than the October level, even if they miss the record level. However, the generation in the first two weeks of November does not augur well for December collections.
At the outset, it should be noted that October GST collections are basically for the transactions done in September. And those done in the festive month of October would translate into GST collections during November.
E-way bill generation at 73.5 million in October was the highest ever. This gives advance information that GST collections in November could be higher than even those of October. The second highest e-way bill generation was at 71.2 million in March, 2021. The March transactions had yielded Rs 1.40 trillion in April a record so far. It is yet to be seen if that record would also be surpassed. As many as 67.9 million e-way bills were generated in September.
However, only 24.1 million GST bills could be generated in the first two weeks of November.
Every registered person has to generate an electronic bill, called e-way bill, if he gets goods worth over Rs 50,000 transported from one place to another. This has to be done regardless of whether goods are transported intrastate or interstate. When an e-way bill is generated, a unique E-way bill number (EBN) is allocated and is available to the supplier, recipient, and transporter. Eway bill has to be generated even for branch transfer of goods by a company.