Telangana tops in GST enforcement

​Hyderabad: Despite facing hiccups, Telangana state is moving ahead of other states in the enforcement of single tax regime – GST – which came into effect from July 1 last year across the country. Overcoming the GST blues in the first few months, the Telangana state has registered 14 per cent growth in tax collections under the new tax structure.

In fact, Telangana was the first state to adopt GST Act in the country in 2017. Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao was also the first chief minister who moved the GST bill by conducting special session of the Assembly.

The revenue from the GST is Rs 22,900 crore from July 2017 to June 30, 2018 (Saturday afternoon) as against Rs 19,955 crore in the corresponding year by registering 14 per cent increase in the revenues. The state Commercial Taxes department officials, however, said that before the launch of the GST, state registered 19 per cent growth in the revenues. After the introduction of GST, it was 14 per cent. The slow pace of tax collections in the first four months under the GST was the main reason for decline in revenues, according to officials.

In the first month (August) after enforcement of the GST, revenue from the new tax regime (including SGST and IGST transferred from the centre to the state) was only Rs 1,258.79 crore. The government would have to struggle hard to overcome the hurdles in tax collections in the first six months after the implementation of the GST. 

The state could get only Rs 9,063 crore revenues till January. After the Centre revised the GST tax structure under the pressure from industrial bodies and consumer organisations, tax collections improved significantly from January in Telangana.

Before GST, the commercial taxes from items covered in the single tax structure to the GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product) registered at 7.09 per cent and after the GST it was 7.66 by achieving 0.57 growth, officials said.     

He said that strict enforcement of the tax norms and bringing more number of commercial establishments under the purview of GST helped to shore up revenues in the second half of the year from January to June. The total number of taxpayers in the state is 2.18 lakh out of which 5,000 are contributing 90 per cent the total GST collected in the state.

Officials said that the IGST (IGST – Integrated GST) came from the Centre also registered substantial increase every month. It was only Rs 418 crore in August but it has gone up to Rs 800 crore in January. The IGST collections to the Telangana has been increased to Rs 1,000 crore from march onwards.