The Central government has refuted criticism of its GST revenue growth calculations, saying comparisons must be made on a like-for-like basis and not across different tax bases.
The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) said in a statement on Wednesday that the GST revenue figures published month on month reflect the correct picture of GST revenue performance, with full disclosure.
The CBIC statement said that the GST Council took a decision to discontinue the compensation cess effective from September 22, 2025, on all items except tobacco and related products. The cess levy on tobacco and related products was also removed from February 1, 2026. Accordingly, for the above period, there is no cess collection.
In view of the above, from the month of November 2025 (first tax period post GST rate rationalisation), GST revenue figures published in the public domain transparently showed compensation cess separately in a table below, and the year-on-year growth was computed on the tax base consisting of CGST, SGST and IGST for the corresponding periods. A footnote was also carried as an ample disclosure, the statement said.
“A growth rate is meaningful only when it is computed on a comparable basis, that is, on the same set of levies on both sides of the comparison. Otherwise, it is like comparing apples and oranges,” the CBIC said.
“The purpose of a growth figure is to show how the tax base has moved. The GST revenue figures published month on month reflect the correct picture of GST revenue performance, with full disclosure. Where a levy has ceased to exist in law, retaining it in the base measures something else altogether. It is neither arithmetically right nor makes any logical sense.”
“Therefore, any attempt to cherry-pick figures from two different tax bases is thoroughly misleading and mischievous. A fair analysis must compare like with like, instead of misleading our citizens by comparing two fundamentally different datasets,” the CBIC statement added.
