The State’s own tax revenue has recorded an increase of 10.19 per cent over last year’s performance by the end of August 2014. This was known at a high-level meeting held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Gokul Chandra Pati at the State Secretariat on Thursday.
Additional Chief Secretary, Finance, UN Behera presented the updated tax revenue position and outlined the issues for discussion. The tax collection up to August 2014 was to the tune of Rs6,489.13 crore against the last year collection of Rs 5,889 crore.Reviewing the revenue augmentation from various sources, the Chief Secretary advised the concerned departments to settle tax and royalty disputes through mutual and bilateral discussions rather than registering litigations and spending time on perusal of cases.
It was decided that a systematic survey of various types of dealers would be conducted regularly and necessary legal steps would be taken to check sales tax evasion. The Chief Secretary advised to develop a community-based localised system for checking illegal mining.Available data showed there was a 21.68-per cent increase in the Professional Tax by the end of August 2013over the last year’s collection of Rs 56.44 crore. The land revenue increased by 18.60 per cent over the last year’s collection of Rs 119.97 crore during the corresponding period.
Similarly, revenue collections from vehicles, excise and electricity duties also increased by 23.88 per cent, 25.50 per cent and 22.47 per cenr, respectively. The collections from stamps and registration and other taxes have not reached the previous year’s figures by the end of August.
The meeting also discussed the recommendations of the Expert Committee on Revenue Enhancement Measures constituted under the chairmanship of former IAS officer Sanjib Chandra Hota with Dr Pulin B.nayak, Professor Delhi School of Economics, and Dr Tapas K Sen, Professor of NIPFP as members.The recommendations of the committee in commercial taxes, State excise duty, motor vehicle tax, land revenue, stamp duty and registration, electricity duty, mining royalty, forest revenue, irrigation and industrial water rate, apartment ownership, etc., were discussed at the meeting. The concerned departments were asked to look into the revenue implication of the committee’s recommendations and suggest necessary measures for their implementation.
Additional Chief Secretary, Revenue, Dr Taradatt, Principal Secretaries and Secretaries of concerned departments along with Additional Secretary, Finance, Debendra Kumar Jena participated in the discussions.