The State Finance Minister Praksh Pant asked the sales tax department officials to tighten the screws around the business community people found evading taxes while closely monitoring the volume of sales and purchases.
He convened a meeting with such officials in Derhadun on Thursday. The meeting was said to have been convened to take stock of the effects the implementation of GST would leave on the State.
While sounding happy over the current status of the State’s revenue collection, he said that the sale tax department officials must be more alert to stop the business community people from evading taxes taking advantage of the lax monitoring machinery. He stressed on the officials taking legal action against the tax evaders. This would not just act as a deterrent but would also add to the revenue coming into the state’s exchequer.
While saying that a few officials have achieved the target the minister asked others who have failed to achieve the target to be more diligent. “We would not brook laxness in matters related to the collection of revenue for the State,” he warned. He cited instances of the mining and iron steel traders evading taxes and asked the sale tax officials to book them under relevant laws. He stressed on coordination with departments like forest, mining, police and RTO for the purpose.
He also asked them to educate the businessmen about rules laid down in GST. Meetings should held with the industrialists and the traders from time to time to learn about the grievances they might have and the grievances should be promptly intimated to the GST council, the minister said.
He asked the teams tasked to man the border areas to be more vigilant so as to ensure that illegal goods are not allowed to cross the border. He told them to be in constant touch with their UP counterparts to stop the illegal entry of goods from that state.
The officials told the minister that the sale tax department should be revamped to enable it to cope up the new tax regime. They said that there is a need to reschedule the areas in sync with the new accountability being fixed while stressing delimitation of the jurisdiction of the officials.