CBEC: Annual Tax Collection Smooth Under GST

Vanaja N Sarna, Chairperson of Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), said that the tax collected under the new tax regime is deviating from the expected figure and there are no targets in line to tweak the annual revenue goals.

She further said for this financial year the expected target is Rs. 9.68 Lakh Crore for revenues under the Department of Customs. The customs collection growth of tax under GST is fine and also the GST implementation is going smoothly from July 1.

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She added, “The rollout has been relatively smooth and collections are more or less coming in line.” According to her, this time it is very tough to decide if the objective of tax collections in the GST would be accomplished or not.

Responding to the question whether GST collection objective will be met or not, she said, “It is very difficult to say for the GST regime because it is only two-three months down the line.”

She spoke about the indirect revenue collection and mistakenly said the tax collection revenue of the centre may be less of the targeted figure for this financial year because GST implementation created the disintegration.

The government had mentioned in a statement last week that the tax collection for September month stands at Rs. 92,150 Crore, for July it was Rs. 95,000 Crore and for August it was Rs. 91,000 Crore.

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Vanaja N Sarna, chairperson of CBEC said that it is not easy to reach the goal because, from the collected tax, GST council has to refund taxpayers under input tax credit and to exporters as well. Sarna said, “But I think by and large six months down the line is a better time to actually gauge what your revenues are going to be.”

Answering the question if there is a need of reconsidering the revenue targets, Chairperson of CBEC said, “At the moment there is no thinking because GST has to settle down. So you can only think about revision if you are sure about what you are falling back on. Let the GST rollout little more, then we will take a call.”