Shimla, May 2 (PTI) The Goods and Service Tax (GST) collection increased 19 per cent to Rs 593 crore in April 2023 against Rs 500 crore in the year-ago period, said Commissioner of State Taxes and Excise Yunus here on Tuesday.

He said the department continues to focus on return monitoring, speedy scrutiny of returns and timely completion of GST audits besides capacity building of the tax officers in order to improve.

Also Read | Cyclone Mocha: Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik Asks Officials To Remain Alert After IMD's Prediction of Cyclonic Circulation Over Bay of Bengal.

The department has targeted verifications of 13 lakh e-way bills in the current financial year. During road checkings, 94,000 e-way bills were verified by the departmental officers and a penalty of Rs 42 lakh was collected in April 2023 from violators.

He said also the department has been focusing on fraudulent taxpayers and has detected a number of non-existing registrations. Strong action is being taken against fraudulent taxpayers. The department has recently conducted an inspection of a few firms suspected to be involved in passing on fraudulent input tax credits.

Also Read | Go Airlines Moves NCLT, Says Pratt & Whitney Not Supplying Spare Engines That Resulted in Grounding of 25 Aircrafts.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)