Bengal’s SGST collection sees 9.6% growth in 1st three quarters of FY25
Kolkata: Bengal‘s State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) collection witnessed a rise of 9.6 per cent in the first three quarters (till December 2024 ) which is well higher than the national GST growth of 7.3 per cent.
Bengal’s GST collection till December has been Rs 34,000 crore against Rs 31,000 crore during the corresponding period last year. “The growth in the third quarter was satisfactory. A noteworthy factor was the good Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) settlement. Some of the previous IGST payments were recovered, particularly during October-November,” said a Finance department official.
In April (first month of 2024-25 quarter), the SGST collection amounting to Rs 4,434 crore was nearly 14 per cent more than the corresponding month in 2023 when it was Rs 3,900 crore. “We have adopted zero tolerance in case of return filing. We reached out to every single taxpayer, including the trade houses, to resolve any issues. The district level officers played a proactive role here. All possible measures were taken to increase compliance. The enforcement has also been strengthened. All these factors have contributed to robust growth in our GST collection,” the official added.
The state government witnessed an increase of Rs 3,000 crore in its GST collection for the financial year 2023-24 over the previous 2022-23 fiscal. The GST collection in 2022-23 was Rs 39,000 crore. This rose to Rs 42,000 crore in 2023-24.
The Directorate of Commercial Taxes, West Bengal has been getting alerts of bogus companies in certain pockets of Dum Dum, Hooghly, Howrah, Behala, South 24-Parganas etc. Apart from pan cards, rent receipts of houses, electric bills of businessmen are being used for such fake registration.
“Our raids since December 2021 to curb fake invoices and subsequent cancellation of registration of bogus firms was a major contributor to our GST collection,” the official said. A good number of GST registrations are being done from remote areas, which is rather unusual.
