Working against adverse conditions like a prolonged Samaikyandhra agitation, a sluggish economic growth, major assessors suffering loss of business and upward revision of property salary for levy of profession tax from Rs.5,000 to Rs. 15,000, the Commercial Taxes division of Visakhapatnam achieved a 3.19 per cent growth for 2013-14. Though the average growth rate in the State was 6.21 per cent, comparable divisions like Panjagutta, Abids, Nalgonda, Secuncunderabad and Vijayawada, among others, registered lower growth.
According to Deputy Commissioner of Commercial Taxes T. Siva Sankara Rao, in spite of the odds the division collected Rs.1294.12 crore recording a tax realisation of 82.35 per cent against a target of Rs.1568.06 crore. The previous year’s achievement was Rs.1254.15 crore. The major contribution come from turnover tax and large tax-paying units ( LTUs). LTUs contribute 58 per cent of the revenue and the growth in them was a mere 1.4 per cent.
Non-taxes include entry tax, luxury tax, entertainment tax, profession tax, rural development cess.
Mr. Rao said other measures like collection of old arrears (Rs.2.4 crore), current arrears (Rs.44 crore), raising audit demand (Rs.7 crore) and check of goods vehicles to levy tax (Rs.2.8 crore) also helped.
Among the major negatives were a fall of Rs.130 crore revenue from MMTC owing to restraints in import of gold and palm oil and a scandal in it and a pipe-making company going bankrupt and local raw material acquisition by a big company. A Kolkata-based public sector agency appointing bogus agent and evading tax was under investigation. Issuing of permissions to deal in coal and iron ore was being strictly monitored and a pre-visit was mandatory, he said.
Rising sales of four-wheelers, coal imports etc helped in notching up the revenue, he said.
Motivating employees, dealing sternly with any non-compliance and rejuvenating work culture led to good tax realisation, he said. Traders filing ‘nil returns’ was brought down from 20 to 25 per cent to 7 per cent and in someone filed ‘nil returns’ for six months he was taken off the list, Mr. Rao added.
Single windowDeputy Commissioner (Commercial Taxes) T. Siva Sankara Rao says a single window will be created to enable firms with branches in the to-be-formed Seemandhra region but head office in Hyderabad register here and pay taxes here.
Right now several petroleum companies and the A P Beverages Company Limited and some jewellers, among others, are paying taxes in Hyderabad.
As of now, letters have been sent to some traders in the vicinity of the Steel Plant and SEZs.
