CHENNAI: The Commercial Taxes and Registration Department in Tamil Nadu is going to introduce Samadhan scheme to collect long-pending arrears of commercial taxes.
An announcement was made by Minister for Commercial Taxes and Registration department KC Veeramani in the Assembly on Wednesday following a debate on demand for grants to his department.
“To collect the pending arrears of taxes under the Tamil Nadu Value Added Tax Act up to 30 June, 2017, Samadhan scheme will be introduced,” he told.
The introduction of Good s and Services Tax from July 1 necessitated the Samadhan scheme to collect the long-pending arrears. The arrears are calculated to be around `1,000 crore, a top official said, adding the government might consider giving some sops to parties concerned to encourage settling the dues.
As part of ensuring safety, the department has decided to install closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) at 10 offices of Commercial Taxes in Vellore, Villupuram, Tiruchy, Thanjavur, Salem, Erode, Coimbatore, Tirupur, Madurai and Tirunelveli, according to Veeramani. The government will spend `142.32 lakh for installation of CCTV cameras, he informed.
10.13% growth in tax revenue
The Commercial Tax department earned a gross revenue of `67,576.77 crore during 2016-17, marking a growth rate of 10.13 per cent when compared to `61,709.58 crore in the previous year, according to the Policy Note on Commercial Taxes department.
The department could make impressive strides in netting more revenue despite the odds of downward trend in prices of fuel during early part of the year, demonetisation of currency notes of `500 and `1000 denominations, natural calamities like Vardah and the unprecedented drought.
Referring to the impact of the Goods and Services Tax, which was rolled out on July 1, Veeramani claimed that Tamil Nadu’s consistent efforts in Parliament and in other forums led to suitable modification of many of the provisions of the Constitutional Amendment Bill.
“Tamil Nadu continued to play a proactive and positive role in the GST Council to protect the rights of the State,” he said.
Responding to members’ concern over the adverse impact of exorbitant tax rate on certain items, he assured that all such issues would be taken up with the GST Council during its meeting.
He claimed that the State had represented its concern over various issues of GST and could succeed in redressing many of them in a satisfactory manner.