Centre garners Rs 12,000 crore GST from West Bengal till December

The Centre has raked in some Rs 12,000 crore from West Bengal during the current fiscal till December as its share from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from the state and expects to exceed the target of Rs 18,000 crore by March 2019, a revenue official said on Friday.

"The CGST share target for the FY19 was Rs 18,000 crore and till December we have already collected Rs 12,000 crore. We hope the target may get exceeded by March," assistant commissioner of CGST, Pandiyaraj GV said on the sidelines of The Bengal Chamber organised a seminar on contentious issues related to GST. He said the filing of refund which is still semi-online would get streamlined soon.

Tax expert TB Chatterjee said GST is a great step but was introduced without training of officials. "The GST officials at the local office level, be it from the state or the Centre are incompetent to guide the traders causing disruptions despite being a good tax system," he said.

Earlier, in his Budget 2019 speech, acting Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said that the government had budgeted to collect over Rs 7.43 lakh crore from Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the current fiscal ending March. However, in the revised estimates, the revenue mop-up has been pegged at over Rs 6.43 lakh crore.

So far, in the 10 months (April-January) of the current fiscal, total GST collections by the Centre and states stood at over Rs 9.71 lakh crore. For the full fiscal 2018-19, the GST collection target of the Centre and states was Rs 13.48 lakh crore.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) was rolled out on July 1, 2017, and has consolidated over a dozen central and state levies.