Inspector raj in Punjab may soon be a thing of the past with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government making attempts to woo the traders’ community just before the crucial 2014 parliamentary polls.
With the State Government giving final touches to the New Trade Policy, it is all set to unveil it on November 14. Keeping in mind the BJP’s stronghold on the traders, the government has decided to minimize the investment of inspectors and go online.
“We are going to announce the traders’ policy on this November 14,” said Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, during an informal interaction with The Pioneer. Cutting and running from one state to another seeking investments for the state’s ‘pitiable’ industrial sector, Sukhbir is all to dole out the facilities for the trading community.
The move is seen as the State Government’s attempt to please the peeved traders from the recent decisions of imposing e-tripping system, imposition of advance tax, among others. Though a section of trading community has given thumbs-up for the advance tax system and the setting up of a dedicated corpus for VAT (value added tax) refund, there are some who have opposed the move.
“This is well thought-of decision and an attempt to give hassle-free services to them. This advance tax is no new tax, but it is a name given to the entry tax which is to be collected in advance just to check the tax evasion,” said Sukhbir.
Regarding the new policy for traders, Sukhbir said that with its implementation, the entire work would go “paperless”.Under this policy, all sanctions required by the traders could be secured online, he added. “The new policy would ensure that traders would not have to visit any government office for any purpose including payments and sales tax purposes,” he said.
He said that the state government is also in the process of preparing a blue print to abolish the ‘inspector raj’ system. “Within next six months, the state would get rid of this unwanted traditional exercise and administrative compulsion,” he added.
The policy is also focusing on simplifying the tax structure. A move in this regard was initiated by the state government with the state assembly recently giving its nod to the Punjab VAT (Second Amendment) Bill, 2013.
Providing a major relief to the traders, the government has do away with the multiplicity in VAT on all commodities by imposing it right at the manufacturing level, helping not only in shortening the taxation procedure, but also abolishing the practice of doing business without proper accounting of sales.
The state has around 2.50 lakh traders, out of which some comply with rules. It has been learnt that only 900 pay more than `1 crore as VAT in a year, while a large section do not pay any VAT by not accounting sales in their books.