The Hindu Business Line : Industry to have a say in `large taxpayer units' scheme implementation

The Finance Ministry has agreed to co-opt an industry member in each of the four functional groups that has now been set up for implementation of the LTU scheme.

Official sources said that each of the four apex industry associations — PHDCCI, FICCI, CII and Assocham — have been requested to nominate one person to be associated with the functional groups.

Four functional groups have been constituted at an all-India level in order to take care of the logistics of the LTU project, which is proposed to come into force from April 1. These groups are infrastructure, relocation and logistics group; systems group; legal and procedural group; and human resources group.

The Finance Ministry's move to co-opt industry representatives in the four functional groups comes in the wake of demands made to this effect by trade at a recent seminar on LTU, which was inaugurated by the Union Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, in the last week of December last year.

As per the proposed LTU scheme, a corporate (Single-PAN based entity) who pays excise duty of Rs 5 crore or more and assessed to income-tax in any of the five specified cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore) can opt for the LTU facility.

Besides a reduction in compliance and transaction costs, the large taxpayers opting for the LTU scheme can also benefit from the facility of filing their excise return, corporate tax return and service tax return at a common place, that is, the LTU without any fresh registration.

Moreover, the large taxpayer would be assessed to these three taxes — excise, service tax and corporation tax — in the LTU only. The facility for e-filing and e-payment of all taxes would be available round the clock.

Manufacturers with multiple excise paying units around the country and fulfilling the eligibility criteria are likely to particularly benefit from this initiative as they can get their assessments done at the LTU. This would enable uniformity in assessment practices, especially in the case of excise duty.

Under the proposed eligibility criteria, the Finance Ministry has estimated that 582 entities would be eligible to join the LTUs on day one. Of the 582 eligible entities, 145 entities are from Delhi, 196 entities from Mumbai, 56 from Bangalore, 101 entities from Kolkata and 84 from Chennai.