New Delhi, September 9, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
The Central government on Wednesday rejected criticism of its GST revenue growth calculations, asserting that meaningful comparisons must be made on a like-for-like basis and should not combine different tax bases.
The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), in a statement, said the GST revenue figures published every month accurately reflect the performance of GST collections and are accompanied by full disclosure.
The CBIC pointed out that the GST Council had decided to discontinue the compensation cess from September 22, 2025, on all items except tobacco and related products. The cess on tobacco and related products was subsequently removed from February 1, 2026. Consequently, there has been no compensation cess collection during the relevant period.
The board said that from November 2025, the first tax period following GST rate rationalisation, the revenue figures placed in the public domain separately disclosed compensation cess in a table, while year-on-year growth was calculated using CGST, SGST and IGST for the corresponding periods. A footnote was also provided as an additional disclosure, it added.
“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 board said the purpose of a growth figure was to indicate how the tax base had changed. It argued that once a levy ceases to exist under law, retaining it in the comparison base would measure a different set of variables and would neither be arithmetically correct nor logically appropriate.
The CBIC further cautioned against selectively using figures drawn from different tax bases, describing such comparisons as misleading. It said a fair assessment should compare like with like rather than two fundamentally different datasets.
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