The Telangana government is set to tighten the noose on corporate hospitals and jewellery shops in a bid to step up its tax collections.
In an interview to The Hindu , Commercial Taxes Minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav said the government proposed to enact an amendment to the existing law that empowered it to get the rooms in hospitals let out for patients to be measured for the purpose of levying luxury tax.
In the absence of data on the size of rooms, corporate hospitals get away paying a small percentage of tax to the government while collecting huge sums from patients.
The rooms are generally larger in size than the declarations made by managements. The government will also take steps to check tax exemption claimed by hospitals on surgical items and fee paid to doctors.
A large portion of the bills drawn on patients is included under surgical and doctor fee categories to evade tax payment, Mr. Yadav said.
The Minister said it was also proposed to get the stocks in jewellery shops audited to ensure prompt issue of bills to purchasers.
It was found that rich people who purchased from a dozen major jewellery shops in Hyderabad did not bother to collect bills, depriving the government of one per cent VAT on the value of ornaments.
Similarly, the government will also install a Central server to track ticketing by cinema halls as the managements evaded tax not declaring “full house” even on the first day of show.
These measures, the Minister insisted, were aimed at plugging loopholes in collections. The government had no intention to impose fresh taxes or hike the existing ones.
The government does not want to harass tax payers as it wants to be trade-friendly. At the same time, the government will put in place an informant network to check tax evasion by setting up a toll free number.
The government will reward the informants with 10 per cent of the tax yield in a raid with a ceiling of Rs. 50,000.
The government is looking to plug loopholes in tax collections
