GST revenue up due to economic activity, not notices: CBIC Chairman
“The growth in October GST collections was riding on economic activity and not because of notices that were sent (to online gaming companies)…notices were sent because of the time limitation which was coming to an end for the year 2017-18. So it’s not because of that. Also, the notices issued to online gaming companies are in dispute but the growth has come purely on the economic activity which has taken place in the country,” Agarwal said at the sidelines of the DPIIT-CII National Conference on Ease of Doing Business.
There was healthy growth in GST revenue from Integrated GST (IGST) on imports also as imports rose compared to earlier months, he said, citing that companies were maybe replenishing their stocks, inventories or due to the upcoming festive season.
GST revenue rose 13.4 per cent in October to Rs 1.72 lakh crore, the second-highest level since the rollout of the indirect tax regime. In April, the GST mop-up was the highest at Rs 1.87 lakh crore. The GST authorities have been issuing notices to companies for short payment of taxes for 2017-18 fiscal as the last date for sending notices for that fiscal was September 30, 2023.
On the issue of e-invoices, Agarwal said the department would continue to nudge businesses to issue e-invoices for B2B transactions and will soon send advisories to non-compliant businesses.
“From August 1, businesses with turnover of over Rs 5 crore are required to issue e-invoices. There I would like to mention that those who had to file e-invoices as per law, there the compliance level is not very high. We will be sending advisory to such taxpayers to issue e-invoices. We do not want to adopt an approach which is intimidating, so we want to initially adopt a soft approach and nudge them to issue e-invoices,” Agarwal said.
The CBIC has made e-invoice mandatory for businesses in a staggered manner beginning 2020. E-invoicing was initially implemented for large companies with turnover of more than Rs 500 crore, and within 3 years threshold has now been lowered to Rs 5 crore.
