State Taxes and Excise department registers 13% growth in Revenue generation: Yunus

The Department of State Taxes has collected Rs.1004 crore in the current fiscal till 31st May against Rs. 890 crore collected during the same period in the last financial year, thereby registering a growth of 13 percent in the first two months of 2023, stated Commissioner, State Taxes and Excise, Yunus  here today.

The department is continuously monitoring the speedy scrutiny of returns, timely completion of GST audits and capacity building of the tax officers to improve GST collection. The department has targeted verifications of 13 lakh e-way bills during the current financial year. The departmental officers in the first two months of the current financial year verified 1.85 lakh e-way bills and collected a penalty of Rs. 92 lakh from violators, he said.

The department has been focusing on fraudulent taxpayers and has detected several non-existing registrations in the past few months. A two-month-long PAN India special drive against fraudulent GST registration has been initiated on 15th May 2023. The objective of the campaign is to uncover fraudulent GST registrations and track to prevent false input tax credit (ITC) claims from being made through fake or non-genuine GST registrations. This drive will help in plugging in revenue leakages in the State. In the first phase of the campaign, the department has identified eight fake firms out of 129 under suspicion thereby evading taxes to the tune of Rs. 10.49 Crore.  The department had earlier inspected a few firms suspected to be involved in passing on fraudulent Input Tax Credit. Strong action is being taken against the fraudulent taxpayers.

The department is in the process of implementation of GST revenue enhancement and capacity augmentation project. The project expects to improve the data analysis capabilities of the department significantly, he said.