In Himachal, the total revenue collection of Excise and Taxation Department in financial year 2020-21 has surpassed the revenue collection of previous financial year by three percent despite heavy disruptions caused by COVID pandemic.
Stating this, the Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Friday said that revenue collection in first quarter was down by 52 percent, thereafter, shrugging off the disruptions caused during initial months due to pandemic induced lockdown, the revenue collection have constantly grown by four percent, 23 percent and 34 percent in second, third and fourth quarters respectively.
He said that the revenue collection has registered a significant growth of 44 percent in the month of March 2021. Total revenue collection for the month of March 2021 was Rs 1006 crores against Rs 699 crores during the same period of last financial year, he added.
Thakur said that revenue receipts under VAT and State GST registered significant growth of 182 percent and 31 per cent respectively during the said month.
He said that a major increase in VAT collections was primarily due to the success of Legacy Cases Resolution Scheme (LCRS). Under this scheme, the department has overall recovered Rs 362 crores by disposing of cases of subsumed taxes, out of which Rs. 182 crores were collected in March 2021 only, he said.
The Chief Minister said that the major reasons for overall growth in revenue receipts have been revival of economic activities, government’s unlock strategy, better compliance by taxpayers and better administration by the department.
Further, new initiatives of the department especially monitoring of field units through performance cards has created a very healthy competitive environment across field formations resulting in greater motivation for officers to beat the assigned targets.
Moreover, the department has recently started another initiative to evaluate its own performance using a Performance Card, he added.
Thakur further said that the efforts of working units have further been strengthened with enhanced analytical and data driven intelligence-based capabilities. The initiatives have resulted in augmentation of state revenue receipts.
The department has also identified major focus areas for augmenting the state revenue collections viz. recoveries under Legacy Cases Resolution Scheme, physical verifications of e-way bills, compliance of GSTR3B return filings, recovery of interest for late filing of returns, recovery of ineligible ITC, recovery of tax deficits or mismatches and identification of cases pertaining to tax evasions and erroneous refunds, he said.