“The government is watchful of the amount of (tax) credit being
claimed by companies, mainly with an annual turnover of over Rs 5 crore.
We will see if they are fraudulently claiming a higher amount,” a
senior government official said.
Besides,
it has been observed that there are revenue leakages as some businesses
are misusing the e-way or electronic way bill mechanism, the official
quoted above said.
Achieving the revenue collection target is
crucial as it has a direct bearing on the fiscal deficit, which
is a gap
between government’s revenue and expenditure. The government has
already exceeded 95 percent of the fiscal deficit target in the first
six months of 2018-19.
The government has set the target of over
Rs 12 lakh crore for the financial year 2018-19, which can be achieved
if the average monthly mop up is around Rs 1 lakh crore. The average
collection during April-September was Rs 96,328 crore, less than the
government’s monthly target.
States’ revenue shortfall has also
been a matter of concern for the government and towards this, states
have been given targets for State GST (SGST) collection by the finance
ministry’s Central Board of Indirect Tax and Customs (CBIC), the
official said.
States faced an average 16 percent shortfall in GST
collection in the first year of implementation from July 1 to March 31
(2017-18), the shortfall has come down to 13 percent during April-August
period of current financial year 2018-19.
In the current
financial year, only six states – Mizoram, Arunachal, Manipur, Nagaland,
Sikkim and Andhra Pradesh – higher-than-anticipated revenue, and will
not require compensation from the Centre.
Rest of the 25 states
have been facing revenue shortfall and will continue to require
compensation from the Centre. Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia has also
visited six states—Puducherry, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh,
Jammu and Kashmir and Chhattisgarh—bearing maximum revenue gap and has
made a report that points out the reasons for the shortfall.
Officials,
however, expect tax collections to increase from next month as business
activity generally picks up in the second half of the year, which leads
to higher tax collection, especially during the festive season that
begins in October.