GST collections in March slipped below the psychological Rs 1-lakh-crore-mark for the first time in four months to Rs 97,597 crore as the Covid-19 lockdown that shut most businesses compounded tax collection woes in an already sluggish economy.

The goods and services tax (GST) mop-up in March recorded an 8.4 per cent decline over the March 2019 collection of Rs 1.06 lakh crore.

The collections were lower on account of a dip in revenues from domestic transactions as well as imports.

In the last four months — November 2019-February 2020 — GST collections had surpassed Rs 1 lakh crore. The number of returns filed during March was 76.5 lakh, lower than 83 lakh filed in February, reflecting poor compliance.

“The gross GST revenue collected in March 2020 is Rs 97,597 crore of which Central GST is Rs 19,183 crore, State GST is Rs 25,601 crore, Integrated GST is Rs 44,508 crore (including Rs 18,056 crore collected on imports), while the cess is Rs 8,306 crore (including Rs 841 crore collected on imports),” a finance ministry statement said on Wednesday.

Pratik Jain, partner and leader (indirect tax) at PwC India, said while there could be some impact of a slowdown that got triggered because of the onset of Covid-19 (though the impact of the lockdown will be reflected in April 2020 numbers), there is around a 7 per cent reduction in filing of GSTR 3B over last month.