While presiding over the State Level GST Review meeting held at Mandi today, Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur said that the officers of the Excise and Taxation Department should adopt proactive approach to ensure that there was maximum GST Collection in the post GST era and also directed the officers to ensure at least 95 percent registration under GST.Chief Minister said that the officers who were performing better would be rewarded and those failing in achieving the desired targets would be penalised. He said that field functionaries should closely monitor 200 top taxpayers in their jurisdiction right from the circle level to headquarter level. 100 percent physical verification of premises of new registrants should also be ensured, he added.Jai Ram Thakur said that the target should be fixed and achieved in stipulated time period. He said that since the GST collection was being monitored at the highest level, laxity would not be tolerated in this regard. He said that GST was implemented from July 2017 and since then the GST collection has witnessed regular growth inspite the fact that at national level this growth was very low. Chief Minister asked the officers to ensure effective enforcement of GST so as to eliminate any revenue leakages besides enhancing revenue contribution from new services assigned to the States such as banking, insurance, telecommunication etc. to offset the loss due to non-consumption based pre-GST taxes.Jai Ram Thakur said that the registration of those tax payers should also be cancelled who have dual registration. In addition to this, he asked to cancel the registration of those contractors who got themselves registered when GST was being implemented but now have become inactive.
Jai Ram Thakur said that possibility of re-organization of department to eliminate multi-tasking and creating functional specialization should be explored besides establishing in-house training centre and imparting national and international exposure to tax officers for capacity building, which will go a long way in reduction of revenue gap.Chief Minister directed to raise the matter of those tax payers before the central GST Commissioner, who come under the ambit of centre but are not filling the returns.Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister and Excise and Taxation Sanjay Kundu welcomed the Chief Minister and said that GST and tax collection plays a key role in coping with the economic slowdown in the country. He said that consultants have been hired from National Informatics Centre Services Incorporated (NICSI) to strengthen Economic Intelligence unit.Sanjay Kundu said that steps have also been initiated to create specialization in dealing with new taxpayers base of services and added that with wide spread suppression such as work contractors, mining hardware etc. were being targeted specifically.Principal Secretary also informed that issuance of circular on destination principle has been taken up with GST Council and Union Government as to plug the loss due to violation of this principle by taxpayers of adjoining States.Commissioner of State Taxes and Excise Ajay Sharma made a detailed presentation regarding various initiatives taken by the State Government for effective tax collection. He said that the State has received GST compensation of Rs 1241 crore till date and the total achievement with GST compensation is Rs 5788 crore. He said that during the current financial year excise collection of Rs 1084 crore, VAT collection of Rs 994 crore, GST collection of Rs 2438 crore, Passenger Goods Tax (PGT) collection of Rs. 78 crore and OTD collection of Rs 212 crore have been done. He said that in this way total tax of Rs 4547 crore has been achieved against the target of Rs 4579 crore till November this year. Member of Parliament Ram Swaroop Sharma, Deputy Commissioner Mandi Rugved Thakur and other officers of the Department were present on the occasion.