20 lakh businesses pay GST so far, more to follow: GSTN Chairman

NEW DELHI: Maiden tax collections under the GST regime have seen over 20 lakh businesses pay tax online so far and about 30 lakh more are expected to do so before the deadline ends on Friday, a top official said.

GST-Network — the company managing the tax filing apparatus — has geared up the IT network to handle the rush, its Chairman Navin Kumar said.

A last-minute rush had led to GSTN portal crashing last week, forcing the government to postpone the tax filing deadline by five days to August 25.

“About 48 lakh taxpayers have saved the sales data on the portal. Of this, 20 lakh have filed returns and paid taxes so far,” Kumar told PTI.

Till August 21, as much as Rs 42,000 crore had come in as taxes from 10 lakh businesses. The taxes submitted include Central-GST, State-GST and Integrated-GST as also cess on luxury and demerit goods like cars and tobacco.

The collection figure would go up substantially with the number of taxpayers doubling to 20 lakh as of today.

Kumar did not give the tax collections numbers but said the remaining 28 lakh taxpayers will file taxes in the next two days.

“The GSTR-3B process include uploading of data, payment of taxes and preparation of cash ledger. Uploading of data takes some time. Since another 28 lakh have already uploaded data, we expect them to pay taxes,” he said.

Asked how prepared GST Network system is to handle the pressure of returns filing as the deadline nears, Kumar said 48 lakh have already come onto the portal and hence there is unlikely that there would be a rush.

The government had on August 19 extended the due date for filing of GST returns and payment of taxes to August 25 from August 20 earlier after businesses complained of snag in the GST portal.

“There was a minor technical glitch for an hour on that day with problem of delayed log in. Still, 2.7 lakh returns were filed on August 19,” Kumar said.

While 72 lakh assessees of the old indirect tax regime have migrated to the GST Network portal, nearly 50 lakh have completed the migration process.

Besides, of the 15 lakh fresh registrations that have happened, as many as 10 lakh are expected to file returns for July.

As per estimates, a total of 60 lakh businesses are expected to file returns and pay taxes for July.