Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today asked the Excise and Taxation Commissioner to tour various mandis in the State to take feedback from traders about ways and means to rationalise and simplify tax collection. Presiding over a meeting of senior officials of the Excise and taxation and finance department at his office here, the Deputy CM asked the Excise Commissioner to take feedback on the apprehensions of traders before framing a policy which would simplify tax collection. He said the new policy framework should be ready by July 1.Spelling out the mandate to the tax officials, Sukhbir Singh Badal said he was in favour of reducing taxes. “We must rationalise the tax structure so that traders do not shy away from paying tax”, he said adding the collection system should also be such that tax payment should be hassle free and involve minimum paper work.
There was also a suggestion that up to a certain limit, traders should be asked to pay only a certain renewal fee which would end the need to keep any books. He said different categories of tax payers could be created to regulate tax collection and that the traders could even be issued stickers on behalf of the department which they could affix on their premises.Discussing the issue of rationalising license fee of marriage palaces, the Deputy CM asked the Excise department to make a list of both licensed as well as illegal marriage palaces running in the State. He said besides conducting the mapping exercise by July 1 the excise department should also create data of top 50 marriage palaces in the State.
Mr Badal said he visualised a system whereby all marriage palaces could be grouped separately according to their turnover following which a lump sum could be charged as license fee. “We can also issue a unique identity number to each marriage palace to make it easy for them to interact with the department”, Mr Badal added.Among others, financial commissioner (taxation) D P Reddy, excise and taxation commissioner Anurag Verma and special principal secretary Ajay Mahajan also attended the meeting.