the goan I network
PANAJI
Ever since the Goods-and-Services-Tax (GST) was rolled out on July 01, 2017, the state government has struggled to post an increase in its tax collections. The month of February 2018 was no different, as state’s GST and Value-Added-Tax (VAT) collections were Rs 9 crore lesser than collections from comparable taxes in February 2017.
Dipak M. Bandekar, Commissioner, Commercial Taxes, said, “In February 2018, we collected Rs 127 crore from state government’s share of GST (SGST), Rs 101 crore from VAT and another Rs 55 crore from inter-state GST (IGST), which all totals to Rs 283 crore. In February 2017, we had collected Rs 292 crore from comparable taxes. This means February collections this year are Rs 9 crore lower.”
Even in previous months, the state government has earned lesser tax revenue on account of GST. In January 2018, the state government had earned Rs 117 crore from SGST, Rs 108 crore from VAT and Rs 74 crore from IGST, which totals to Rs 299 crore.
In January 2017, the state government had earned Rs 344 crore from comparable taxes. This means that January 2018’s tax collections were a whopping Rs 45 crore lesser than January 2017’s collections.
The main reason behind this trend is multiple tax reductions by GST Council. In January 2018, the GST Council had slashed tax rate on 29 items.
Prior to that, in November 2017, the GST Council had reduced tax rate on 177 items.
What really affected Goa’s tax collections was a massive reduction in GST rate on restaurants in November 2017.
The GST rate on all restaurants was reduced to 5% with the exception of those in luxury hotels. Before this round of reduction, GST rate was 18% for air-conditioned (AC) restaurants and 12% for non-AC restaurants.
Bandekar also said that the state government will most probably get a compensation of Rs 20 crore from the central government on account of shortfall in its tax collections for the month of February 2018.
