In India, the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the Goods and Service Tax collection. GST collection for the month of March and April have considerably fallen along with the decrease in the number of electronic permits and GST e-way bill generation
E-way bills are needed when the goods worth Rs. 50,000 or more are being transported from one state to another. This enables the officers to keep a check on the financial transaction without actually intervening in the supply. Starting from 1 April to 27 April, businesses in India were able to generate only 6.7 million E-way bills as compared to 40.6 million E-way bills generated in the month of March 2020, as revealed by the official data from Goods and Service Tax Network (GSTN). More than 83% fall in the e-way bills generated in April is the clear indication of GST revenue collection for the month of May that will be revealed on 1 June 2020.
Businesses can pay taxes for the previous month till the 20th of the consecutive month but the GST revenue in May will show a clear impact of the economic halt due to nationwide lockdown. Likewise, the impact of the lockdown started in March showed its clear traces in the revenue collection for April. In March, the total GST e-way bills generated