VIJAYAWADA: Stating that there has been a steep fall in revenue due to the Covid pandemic, Special Chief Secretary (Revenue) Rajat Bhargava has stressed the need to raise the issue of disbursing the compensation due to Andhra Pradesh expeditiously and extension of the period of compensation at the 45th GST Council meeting. He exhorted the officials to focus on the revenue augmentation and achieve the targets set in the budget estimates.
Any shortfall in achieving the targets by the Commercial Taxes Department will adversely affect the developmental activities and welfare measures in the State, he observed. Bhargava was speaking at a review meeting with the Chief Commissioner (State Tax) Ravi Shankar Narayan Sudagani and senior officers of the Commercial Taxes Department on the issues to be raised in the 45th GST Council meeting to be held in Lucknow on September 17. Steps to be taken for augmentation of revenue in the current financial year was also discussed in the meeting.
He directed the Chief Commissioner of State tax to study the sectors footwear, textiles, fertilisers where there is inverted duty structure (the tax rate on output is less than the tax rates on inputs), resulting in huge refunds of the tax remitted to the exchequer on inputs, posing a twin problem of losing revenue and administrative burden of processing refunds.
While informing the instructions of the Chief Minister for a multi-pronged approach, which includes increasing the taxpayer base by identifying tax evasion, he said the instructions of the Chief Minister should be compiled in letter and spirit.
With regard to increasing the tax payer base, the Special Chief Secretary said several approaches such as selective street survey, information from other government departments such as Registration and stamps, Transport etc., should be utilised for bringing evaders in the tax net.
He said details of those sectors which are showing negative growth or not showing the expected growth such as telecommunications, automobiles, palm oil, restaurants should be verified. While verifying these sectors, data from different sources such as online business platforms, transport department on vehicle registrations and import data from ports should be cross-checked with the declared turnovers. He instructed that data tools should be utilised for identifying tax evasion.
Steps to bring more in tax net
The Special Chief Secretary said several approaches such as selective street survey, information from other government departments such as Registration and stamps, should be utilised for bringing evaders in tax net.