State witnesses 38 pc revenue growth in Jan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, February 5

Himachal Pradesh has registered 38 per cent growth in January 2021 in revenue receipts under all heads of the Excise and Taxation Department vis-a-vis the revenue receipts of January 2020, Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur said here today.

He said that total revenue receipts during the month of January 2021 are Rs 779 crores against Rs 562 crores during the same period last year. The positive trend of revenue growth for last five months seems to continue indicating increase in economic activities in the state.

Thakur said a significant increase of 119 per cent in revenue receipts of VAT, 32 per cent in revenue receipts of excise and 19 per cent in revenue receipts of the state GST have been registered in January 2021.

Revenue receipts of the department grew at 15 per cent in August 2020, 10 per cent in September 2020, 37 per cent in October 2020, 9 per cent in November, 2020 and 24 per cent in December, 2020.

He said the significant increase in revenue receipts is due to disposal of cases of under Legacy Cases Resolution Scheme (LCRS) revival of economic activities, government””s unlock strategy, better compliance by taxpayers and better administration by the department.

It is important to mention that despite Covid 19 effect, the gap between cumulative revenue of current financial year and previous financial year is down to 3 per cent in January, 2021 from 39 per cent in July 2020, he stated.

New initiatives of monitoring of field units through performance cards and other IT based measures have created healthy competitive work environment across the field authorities where each authority drives motivation to make strenuous efforts to beat the assigned targets.

Principal Secretary Excise and Taxation Jagdish Chander Sharma said that major focus areas have been identified for augmenting the state revenue receipts like recoveries under legacy cases resolution scheme, physical verifications of e-way bills, compliance of GSTR3B return fillings, recovery of interest for late filling of returns, recovery of ineligible Input Tax Credit (ITCs) and recovery of tax deficits/mismatches etc.

Special focus has been laid on identification of cases pertaining to tax evasions and erroneous refunds to plug revenue leakages so as to augment the state revenues, he informed.