State struggled to bost commercial tax kitty in 2017-18

the goan I network
PANAJI
It appears that successive reduction in GST has taken its toll on the state government’s finances.  
Dipak M. Bandekar, Commissioner of Commercial Taxes said, “The government earned Rs 3,255.92 crore in 2017-18 from commercial taxes, which was 1.76% more than Rs 3,199.57 crore collections in 2016-17. However, these are provisional figures.”  
He continued, “This shows that the growth was flat in 2017-18, which was on account of several tax reductions by GST Council. The council had reduced GST rate on restaurants, which has really affected commercial tax collections because restaurants are a major part of trade in the state.”  
In November 2017, the GST Council on all restaurants was reduced to 5% except for luxury hotels. Prior to this, GST  of 18% was aplicable for AC restaurants and 12% on non-AC.  
In the same meeting, the GST Council had reduced tax rate on 178 items overall. Subsequent to that, in January 2018, the council slashed GST on 29 items and 54 services. Such reductions might have pleased the business community, but the government is struggling to grow it tax kitty.  
Bandekar further said, “We are hoping to make up on the tax collection front this year (2018-19) with more technical support on the GST system.”  
“Moreover, the system of e-way bill has been implemented from April 1. Now, we will be able to know which goods are coming into Goa. Earlier, it was all manual,” Bandekar said.  
The central government had rolled out GST pan-India on July 1 last year. Ever since then, the state government has struggled to grow its tax collections. A number of indirect taxes like value-added-tax (VAT), entry tax, entertainment tax and etc were absorbed by GST.  
The state government has received Rs 252 crore from the central government for eight months between July 2017 and February 2018 as compensation for not able to grow its tax revenue at a prescribed rate.