The State Government has made yet another attempt to tax mine owners. It made this demand at the meeting of empowered committee of State Finance Ministers on the Goods and Service Tax (GST) in New Delhi on Thursday.
As the minerals-producing States would not benefit on the implementation of the GST in place of Value Added Tax (VAT)), provisions should be made to levy a Green Tax by the loss-making and minerals-bearing States like Odisha, said State Finance Minister Prasanna Acharya at the meeting.
He asked the Centre to allow minerals-bearing States to impose Green Tax on mining activities. ACS Finance, UN Behera and Commercial Tax Commissioner Manoj Ahuja were also present at the meeting.
"There should be a provision in the central Act for levy of Green Tax on production of minerals. Since mineral production pollutes environment of minerals-bearing States, the money to be collected as Green Tax would be utilised for environment protection," Acharya argued.
He pointed out that a minerals-producing State which gets affected by pollution does not get any part of tax revenue under the GST. "It is the consuming State that gets the tax revenue whereas what the people of the producing State get is pollution," he said.
This was the State Government’s second attempt to impose tax on mine owners. Earlier, its demand of imposing a Mineral Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) on mine owners was rejected by the Centre.
The State Government has failed to tax mine owners even after it realised that they take away windfall profit by utilising the State’s resources on which people have absolute rights as their wealth.
Now, the State Government’s attempt to arrest the members of the Board of Directors of mine owner Deepak Gupta’s company has hit the hurdle. Though the Vigilance police arrested Gupta in connection with the Rs 1,800-crore Uliburu mining scam, the company’s other directors remained out of the Vigilance’s reach.
Prior to this the State Government had attempted to collect penalty from mine owners for excess mining, which failed. And now, the Green Tax proposal will also have no takers, feel tax experts.