PANAJI
The December month numbers, considered Goa's most productive month commercially, are yet to be counted but officials in the State's finance department are already bullish on the State's revenues from goods and services tax (GST) collections for the current fiscal.
A senior official said, the State has registered robust growth in GST collections in the first eight months of the current fiscal (April-November) with revenues tipping the 9.5 per cent growth rate mark.
He said the State has netted Rs 2,814.76 crore in GST collections during these eight months which is 9.57 per cent higher than what was collected in the same eight-month period last year. The net collections last year for the same period was Rs 2,568.99 crore.
Additionally, registered GST payers (tax base) had also soared steadily and has now crossed the 45,000 mark on the back of consistent measures taken by the Commercial Taxes department to better compliance rates and also digitize the transaction tracking system, he added.
Some measures taken this year also include an amnesty scheme cleared by the cabinet for tax payments which were pending from the first few years. The amnesty scheme was mooted by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant following feedback from small businesses who faced difficulty in GST compliance during the Covid-19 pandemic years.
Separately, VAT compliance has also improved drastically and over 8,000 traders are now on the department's roster after the government amended the VAT law to rid it of the Rs 10 lakh turnover threshold, the official said.
