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.