The Hindu Business Line : VAT boost: AP eyes higher commercial tax receipts

Encouraged by increasing growth rates in VAT collections, the Commercial Taxes Department is targeting to cross the Rs 20,000-crore mark in the next two years.

The Government shored up the target for the current financial year at Rs 15,465 crore as against a target of Rs 12,706 crore for 2005-06 and Rs 11,242 crore for 2004-05.

Addressing officials of the department here on Thursday, Mr Konathala Ramakrishna, Minister for Commercial Taxes, said revenue collections in the first two months of this fiscal showed a growth of 45 per cent. The net revenue was put at Rs 2,106 crore during the period, as against Rs 1,449 crore in the same period last year.

The target of Rs 2,050 crore for the two months was achieved by 102.5 per cent. He, however, admitted to the fact that growth rates last year were not that high.

On phasing out of Central Sales Tax, (CST), the Minister said the Union Government had agreed for a proposal to compensate the States through allocating more funds from Service Tax collections.

The CST phase-out would put a burden of about Rs 1,000 crore. The Union Government was willing to take the average of CST collections during the last three years, the State was arguing that it wanted the best performing year for the calculation of compensation.

CST had become a major hurdle in applying a uniform tax regime across the country.

The Minister said the State was studying to phase out the usage of waybills. There was also a proposal to reduce the VAT rate on hardware.

"We are studying models in other States. The idea is to make the system user-friendly," he said, later talking to reporters.

He directed the officials to effectively use the electronic network to encourage e-filing of VAT returns.

More Stories on : Taxation | Andhra Pradesh

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page