BHUBANESWAR: In a bid to boost Goods and Service Tax (GST) revenue, the State Government has adopted a target-based approach to identify unregistered taxable persons at the circle-level and bring them into the tax net every month. The Government has directed all sales tax circles to conduct surveys and identify at least 50 potential unregistered taxpayers every month and take steps to bring them into GST fold. The focus would be on the service sector to widen the tax base.
After the Commissionerate of Commercial Tax and GST came under the 5T charter of the Government, all commercial tax and GST circles have also been assigned the target of 100 per cent scrutiny of returns and to take necessary follow up actions including spot visits. “We have taken steps to ensure 100 pc post-registration verification of all registered tax payers to identify fake registration cases. The target has been set accordingly.
The target for survey of potential taxpayers, who have not yet been registered, has been communicated to the field functionaries,” a senior Finance department official said. The move comes in the light of slowing growth of GST collections in the State. Though Odisha had registered a growth of 30.08 per cent in collection, the highest amongst major states and higher than the national average of 11.53 per cent, during April-October 2019 period, it has mustered only two per cent growth in December 2019 as compared to December 2018. GST collection in the State from April to October 2019 was Rs 8,683.85 crore against Rs 6,675.83 crore during the corresponding period of 2018. However, as per the data released by the Centre on Wednesday, the State’s share of Central GST for December was Rs 2,383 crore against Rs 2,347 crore collected in the month in 2018.
Odisha has 15 Commercial Tax and GST circles of which four are located in Bhubaneswar, two in Ganjam and one each in Angul, Balasore, Bhadrak, Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Koraput, Mayurbhanj and Puri. Circles having tax payers strength of 5000 and above are in focus. Meanwhile, the Government has issued a notification that an invoice (business to consumer) issued by a registered person, whose aggregate turnover in a financial year exceeds Rs 500 crore, to an unregistered person will have quick response (QR) code.