With an ambitious revenue target of Rs. 24,500 set for the current fiscal, the Department of Trade and Taxes is exploring options to boost revenue generation.
To start with, said a senior Delhi government official, the department will bring more traders under the tax ambit. According to officials, there are about 3.5 lakh traders registered with the department but only 22 per cent (74,000) of them paid taxes in the last quarter of 2015-16.
“We have drawn up a list of the traders who have not been paying taxes. We will send them advisories,” said a Trade and Taxes department official. The traders pay taxes to the government on quarterly basis.
Officials had recently initiated investigations against the city’s 10 big traders for tax evasion, and will file charge sheets against them in court by the end of April. This was for the first time that the government’s VAT Department had decided to use its investigative powers equivalent to that of a police station as laid out in the Delhi VAT Act to probe cases pertaining to tax evasion. “If traders do not pay up even after being served notices, we will resort to strict action,” he said.
According to officials, the department is going to create two kinds of lists— those who don’t pay at all and those who have not been paying in each quarter.
He said the registration process would be simplified, and awareness campaigns would be carried out in the city.
