Commercial Tax dept. to unveil amnesty scheme

‘Samadhan’ to collect outstanding tax

The Commercial Taxes Department will soon unveil a “Samadhan Scheme” to collect outstanding tax arrears that are pending for a long time, Commercial Taxes Minister K.C. Veeramani said in the Assembly on Wednesday.

Replying to the debate on the demand for grants, he said the department would unveil the scheme to collect arrears that are pending under the earlier VAT regime, as GST has been implemented from July 1.

“We will soon implement the scheme, most probably once the Assembly session ends next week. There are many cases that are pending in the courts and at various levels in the department due to disputes over the tax amount, that will be brought under the scheme,” Mr. Veeramani later told

The Hindu. The Minister said in each case that is pending resolution, the interest, principal and the penalty amount will be calculated.

“We will call all of them and ensure that the disputes over the tax are resolved. We will probably have all the officers come together and discuss the issue with the assessee and come up with a solution,” he said.

Mr. Veeramani said the department might either reduce the penalty or do away with it, and even the outstanding interest component could be reduced.

“They might have to pay, may be, just the principal amount outstanding. But those details will be thrashed out.”

Individual cases

There are 10 zonal regions and each case will be dealt with separately and quickly to ensure the tax is paid, while there are a number of Large Tax Payers (LTP) whose cases will mostly be handled in Chennai and Coimbatore, he added.

He said that the scheme will also be made available for the Registration department. “Many cases are pending in courts. We will try to bring a compromise in those cases and get the pending amount,” he added.

The Minister said the government will look at revising down the registration fees, which was recently increased to 4%. “We can look at reducing it again after a period of six months.” We were incurring losses due to a low registration fee and once we hit the threshold, even if we don’t have any losses, but the amount is balanced, we could possibly reduce it,” Mr. Veeramani said.