Govt defends GST data against manipulation claims
The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) on Wednesday defended the reported strong growth in goods and services tax (GST) collections in FY27 so far after former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg claimed the data is being manipulated to show high mop-up.
In an article on Tuesday, Garg claimed the government is manipulating data by showing the 11% growth in April-August GST collections while excluding cess collections.
Gross GST collections rose 14.8% year-on-year to Rs 2 lakh crore in August while April-August collections were up 11% at Rs 10.4 lakh crore. GST revenue post-refunds rose 8.3% on year in August to Rs 1.68 lakh crore and up 9% in the five months to August at Rs 8.89 lakh crore.
“When (cess is) included, 5 month gross GST growth becomes 4.08% and net 1.30%, a pathetic performance,” Garg said. “There is an unfortunate but increasing tendency to manipulate data to suit narratives,” Garg said.
Refuting this, the CBIC said that the GST revenue figures reflect the correct picture of GST revenue performance.
The GST Council discontinued the compensation cess from September 22, 2025 on all items except tobacco and related products. The cess levy on tobacco and related products was also removed from February 1, 2026. Accordingly, from the above period, there is no cess collection, the CBIC said.
Since November 2025, GST revenue figures published publicly showed compensation cess separately in a table below and the year-on-year growth was computed on the tax base consisting of CGST, SGST and IGST for the corresponding periods, the CBIC said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Where a levy has ceased to exist in law, retaining it in the base measures something else altogether. It is neither arithmetically right nor makes any logical sense,” the CBIC said. “A growth rate is meaningful only when it is computed on a comparable basis, that is, on the same set of levies on both sides of the comparison. Otherwise, it is like comparing apples and oranges.”
The CBIC added that the purpose of a growth figure is to show how the tax base has moved.
Any attempt to cherry-pick figures from two different tax bases is “thoroughly misleading and mischievous,” the CBIC said. “A fair analysis must compare like with like, instead of misleading our citizens by comparing two fundamentally different datasets.”
