A year since the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime was introduced to replace several forms of indirect taxes on July 1 last year, Delhi’s tax collections have seen an increase, according to State government data.
But the answer to exactly how much the State government’s collections have increased depends on what is compared.
Multiple taxes replaced
Since GST replaced multiple taxes, government officials say comparing GST collections to the collection of the earlier Value Added Tax (VAT), which was one of the main indirect taxes done away with, would not give the true picture.
That being said, the Delhi government’s Trade and Taxes Department has seen an increase of around 15% in its collections.
According to the Department, ₹22,790 crore was collected as VAT in 2016-2017, the last full year that VAT existed.
In 2017-2018, the Department collected ₹26,337 crore in VAT for the first three months of the financial year plus GST for the remaining nine months.
In 2017-2018, the share of the State in the form of State GST (SGST) was ₹7,964 crore. Till March 31, 2018, Delhi got ₹5,559 crore in the form of Integrated GST (IGST), which is the tax on goods and services going from one State to another. In addition, Delhi also got ₹157 crore as compensation from the Centre.
“The experience has been good in Delhi. During the roll-out, it was a challenging period. There was hand-holding of dealers required. There were IT system challenges. GST is a mega reform and it is on the right track,” said Trade and Taxes Commissioner H. Rajesh Prasad.
Teething troubles
He added that teething troubles had been sorted as dealers became used to online filing of returns and IT challenges were addressed.
