BHUBANESWAR: The State Government has demanded Central Sales Tax (CST) compensation of `2834.43 crore from 2011-12 to 2013-14 for introduction of Goods and Sales Tax (GST).
The issue was raised in the meeting of the empowered committee (EC) of Finance Ministers which concluded at Thiruvananthapuram on Friday. The Centre has sanctioned `1626.58 crore upto April 30, 2015 from 2007-08 to 2010-11 against the State Government’s claim of `1885.78 crore.
Finance Minister Pradip Amat, who did not attend the meeting, had requested the Chairman of the EC and Kerala Finance Minister KM Mani to include the issue of uniform VAT rate on agricultural produce like dal, pulses, wheat and wheat products in the agenda for discussion in the meeting. Amat said this will remove the difficulties faced by traders/consumers of Odisha due to different tax rates in different States.
Official sources said the report of Joint Committee on Returns proposed that the address of the buyer has to be made mandatory in every invoice having the value of Rs 50,000 or more. Invoices for a value of less than RS 50,000 that do not have address in record will be treated as intra-State supply.
The Odisha Government maintained that this provision will tend to non-mentioning of address of the buyer in the invoice issued by dealers even in case of inter-State sales. The value of inter-State transaction of less than Rs 50,000 will be enormous and total aggregate value and tax will be substantial.
If the inter-State transactions are treated as intra-State supplies due to non-mentioning of buyer’s address, consuming States like Odisha will lose a substantial amount of revenue, the Government maintained and demanded that address of buyer in all inter-State transactions should be made mandatory.