The revenue department will focus on quarterly average of GST revenues for better analysis of revenue trend, an official said. While the Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections in April-the first month of the current fiscal -came in at Rs 1.03 lakh crore, the average monthly collection last fiscal from August-March was Rs 89,885 crore.
“The department will look at quarterly revenue trends to better gauge the revenue trend. The aim is to increase the average revenue collection from what we achieved last fiscal,” a senior official told.
From 2018-19 fiscal, the government has shifted to a cash basis of accounting where revenues accrued at the completion of a month would be taken on record immediately at the end of the month.
While releasing the April tax collection data yesterday, the Finance Ministry had said that in March which is the last month of a financial year, taxpayers pay arrears of some of the previous months also and, therefore, this month’s revenue cannot be taken as trend for the future.
The official, however, said that the GST collections in May too are expected to be higher as e-way bill was implemented across the country from April 1.