The Commercial Taxes Department is on course to achieve the estimated tax revenue target of Rs. 68,724 crore for the current fiscal, Commercial Taxes Minister M.C. Sampath informed the Assembly on Wednesday.
Replying to the debate on the demands for grants for the Department, he said that during 2013-14, the Department realised Rs. 56,852 crore in tax revenue, an 18.73 per cent increase over the previous year, despite the slowdown in the Indian economy and a lean agricultural season in the State. In 2010-11, the tax revenue was Rs. 31,117 crore.
On the stamps and registration front, 26,53,291 documents were registered, and this brought in Rs. 8,055 crore to the exchequer.
The target for the current year was Rs. 10,145 crore, the Minister said.
In the past three years, the government had sanctioned Rs. 104.90 crore for constructing buildings for housing sub-registrar and other departmental offices functioning in rented buildings.
With the amount, construction of 135 sub- registrar offices and 40 integrated complexes were taken up.
Of them, 38 buildings were declared open while work on the rest was under way. A sum of Rs. 33.36 crore was granted to modernise 28 checkpoints, he said.
The jurisdiction of the commercial taxes districts and ranges would be reorganised, depending on the work load and staff availability.
This followed the recent reorganisation of the four Commercial Taxes Divisions in Chennai. There would be 25 circles each with approximately 29,000 assesses, he said.
The department embarked on a new phase of e-governance under its ‘Total Solution Project’ focussing on process engineering, citizen centricity and control of tax evasion. Preparation of functional requirement specification was under progress.
The pilot rollout was expected in September, and the State-wide rollout would be completed by October in two phases, Mr. Sampath said.