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GST collection dropped to Rs 94,726 crore in December 2018, lower than Rs 97,637 crore collected in the previous month.  The total number of sales returns or GSTR-3B filed till December 30, 2018, is 72.44 lakh, the finance ministry said in a statement.  Compensation released to states for August-September stood at Rs 11,922 crore.  Of the Rs 94,726 crore collected, Central GST (CGST)collection is Rs 16,442 crore, State GST (SGST) is Rs 22,459 crore, Integrated GST (IGST) is Rs 47,936 crore and Cess is Rs 7,888 crore. The government has settled Rs 18,409 crore to CGST and Rs 14,793 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement, it said.  The total revenue earned by central government and state governments after regular settlement in December is Rs 43,851 crore for CGST and Rs 46,252 crore for SGST, the ministry added.  The Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection stood at Rs 1.03 lakh crore in April, Rs 94,016 crore in May, Rs 95,610 crore in June, Rs 96,483 crore in July, Rs 93,960

The board of Reserve Bank of India, under new governor Shaktikanta Das, has set the basic rule that would determine future payout by the central bank to the government. At its last meeting, the board is learnt to have recorded the decision that the central bank will not touch the ‘unrealised gains’ in its balance sheet for dividend distribution to its sole shareholder, the government.  “Unrealised gain is valuation gain in currency and gold. To tap this, it has to be realised or converted in the market. This is now ruled out… this has been minuted,” a person familiar with the matter told ET. Of RBI’s total reserves of ?10.46 lakh crore, about ?6.9 lakh crore is recorded under ‘currency and gold revaluation account’ while ?2.32 lakh crore is ‘contingency fund’.  The quantum of dividend to the government and the sharing of any surplus over and above RBI’s economic capital has been a contentious issue between RBI and the government reviving the old question on what’s the optimum capit

Since India introduced the goods and services tax (GST) in July 2017, the tax reform has seen numerous changes. About 18 months into its life, it is still under intense scrutiny. Mint takes a look at GST’s evolution and its future direction. Then and now In the pre-GST tax regime, each commodity would attract up to 17 taxes,  Under the GST, four tax slabs were introduced, with each item taxed at one rate.  The plan is to move towards a single standard rate in the future of around 15%  Since its implementation GST rates have been sharply cut on many items. The highest slab of 28% has only 27 categories of products, down from close to 228 at the time of rollout  Has GST succeeded in achieving its goals? The goods and services tax (GST) replaced 17 central and state taxes that existed before and has led to the removal of check posts at state borders, transforming India into a single market. It cut business costs by removing what is called “tax on tax”. GST has also increased the n

The cost of capital needs to be lowered to support economic growth, said principal economic adviser in the finance ministry Sanjeev Sanyal, building a case for a rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its February monetary policy review.  The macro environment has by and large improved and conditions are in place for re-acceleration of the economy, Sanyal said in an interview. “Now that we have anchored inflation to a lower level, we need to bring down interest rates to be in sync with the new inflation rates. How we achieve this transition is, of course, the RBI’s and monetary policy committee’s prerogative,” said Sanyal. Sanjeev Sanyal, principal economic adviser in the finance ministry, maintains a fine balance between his profession of an economist advising the government on the financial sector and his interest in reading and writing on history. In an interview, Sanyal talks about supervising more closely the larger systemically important nonbanking financial companies

The Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) has busted a racket of fraudulent companies engaged in raising fake tax invoices worth Rs 2.2 billion to avail input-tax credit.  According to the DGGI, searches were conducted at several official as well as residential premises last Thursday in Chennai and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and busted the racket and arrested two persons.  "Several incriminating documents, including copies of fake invoices, issued on the letterheads of several firms that existed merely on paper, were seized", an official release issued on Sunday by Additional Director General K Balaji Majumdar said. The modus operandi was that several bogus companies and bank accounts were created using PAN and Aadhaar number of family members and employees, and complex transactions were made without the supply of goods, the release said.  According to the documents seized, fake invoices covering goods worth more than Rs 2.2 billion were issued without supply of go

Kolkata tops list with 617 cancellations, Delhi second with 203 Stepping up oversight over credit companies, the Reserve Bank of India has cancelled the registration of 1,490 non-banking financial companies (NBFCs). These included NBFCs that failed to meet prudential norms and those that voluntarily surrendered registration.  Kolkata tops the list with 617 cancellations, and New Delhi stands at second spot with 203, followed by Mumbai at 190, according to the data provided by the RBI for parliamentary questions (Lok Sabha). These cancellations happened owing to non-compliance with mandatory requirements like minimum net-owned funds (NoF) of Rs 20 million, not submitting statutory returns, and companies not being traced at the addresses they gave.  In some cases, NBFCS surrendered the certificate of registration, the RBI said.  The RBI said NBFCs registered with the regulator were subject to on-site inspection and off-site monitoring through return submission and statutory auditors’

The option of “marrying” the insolvency framework with a possible settlement scheme to deal with resolution of debt-laden companies is something that can be considered in the future, said finance and corporate affairs minister Arun Jaitley.  It will be only after the initial batch of bankruptcy cases is cleared, Jaitley said at an event Tuesday. “We have to see if revival is only through the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) or can we revive otherwise,” he said, sounding a note of caution that the various Reserve Bank of India schemes for settling and restructuring debt had not yielded much success. “I think today may not be the right time to go in for this discussion because of the huge rush of companies coming into the insolvency process. But once this rush is off over the next couple of years, business comes back to usual and honest creditor-debtor relationship is restored on account of IBC, a situation may arise when we have to consider a need to marry the two processes, so