Tag: tax

Bengal Govt launching app for online payment of municipal taxes

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To make payment of property and other municipal taxes easier, the State Government is going to launching a mobile app through which the taxes can be made. This service will be gradually rolled out for all the types of taxes paid by citizens to civic bodies.

Online mode of payment would enable people to pay their taxes from the comfort of their homes or from wherever they want.
Twenty municipalities have been identified for the pilot project. The pilot project has been named ‘Online Module/Portal and Mobile App for Payment and Other Allied Matters of Municipal Property Tax’.

The selected municipalities are: Alipurduar, Bangaon, Bankura, Bansberia, Behrampore, Bolpur, Chakdaha, Chapadani, Egra, English Bazar, Haldia, Jalpaiguri, Kamarhati, Kanchrapara, Katwa, Konnagar, Medinipur, Nalhatri, Pujali and Titagarh.

 

ঘরে বসেই এবার পুরকর জমা দেওয়া যাবে,অ্যাপ আনছে রাজ্য

সম্পত্তি সহ বিভিন্ন ধরনের পুরকর জমা নেওয়ার প্রক্রিয়া সরলীকরণ করতে অ্যাপ আনছে রাজ্য সরকার। রাজ্যের ২০টি পুরসভাতে পাইলট প্রজেক্ট হিসাবে এই অ্যাপ ও অনলাইন ওয়েব পোর্টাল চালু করা হচ্ছে। পুরদপ্তর সূত্রে জানা গিয়েছে, ধীরে ধীরে তা রাজ্যব্যাপী ছড়িয়ে দেওয়া হবে।

এই পোর্টাল ও অ্যাপ মারফত পুরবাসীরা সহজেই নিজেদের ইচ্ছেমতো সময়ে পুরসভার বিভিন্ন ধরনের কর মিটিয়ে দিতে পারবেন।

মুখ্যমন্ত্রী মানুষকে যেমন অধিকতর পুরপরিষেবা দিতে চাইছেন, তেমনি তাঁদের জন্য বিভিন্ন সুবিধার ব্যবস্থাও করতে চাইছেন। এই অ্যাপ ও পোর্টালের মাধ্যমে মানুষ সেই সুবিধা পাবেন।

নতুন এই পাইলট প্রকল্পের নাম দেওয়া হয়েছে অনলাইন মডিউল/পোর্টাল অ্যান্ড মোবাইল অ্যাপ ফর পেমেন্ট অ্যান্ড আদার অ্যালায়েড ম্যাটার্স অব মিউনিসিপ্যাল প্রপার্টি ট্যাক্স। পুরদপ্তরের নির্দেশিকা অনুসারে ইংলিশবাজার, জলপাইগুড়ি ও আলিপুরদুয়ার পুরসভাকে এই প্রকল্পের আওতায় আনা হয়েছে। একই সঙ্গে মুর্শিদাবাদের বহরমপুর পুরসভাও এই প্রকল্পের আওতায় এসেছে। এছাড়া নলহাটি, বোলপুর, কোন্নগর, চাঁপদানি, টিটাগড়, বনগাঁ, কাটোয়া, হলদিয়া, বাঁশবেড়িয়া, বাঁকুড়া, চাকদহ, কাঁচড়াপাড়া, মেদিনীপুর, এগরা, পূজালি, কামারহাটি পুরসভাকেও পাইলট প্রকল্পে রাখা হয়েছে।

সাম্প্রতিক সময়ে অ্যান্ড্রয়েড মোবাইল মানুষের নিত্যসঙ্গী হয়ে উঠেছে। ফলে মোবাইল অ্যাপ মারফত কর দেওয়ার পদ্ধতি চালু করা হলে তার মাধ্যমে যে কোনও জায়গা থেকে যে কোনও সময়ে পুরসভার সম্পত্তি কর মিটিয়ে দেওয়া সহজ হবে। একই কাজ পোর্টাল মারফতও করা সম্ভব।

উল্লেখ্য, রাজ্যের বিদ্যুৎ বণ্টন কোম্পানি এই ধরনের একটি পদ্ধতি ইতিমধ্যেই চালু করে রেখেছে।

Major GST issues unresolved: Amit Mitra

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A lot of issues related to roll out of Goods and Services Tax are yet to be resolved, feels Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra, chairman of the GST committee of state finance ministers.

“A lot of issues have not been discussed, without which GST cannot be rolled out,“ he told reporters after a pre-state budget meeting with industry bodies and chambers. The Centre has fixed a revised deadline for GST roll out on July 1.

Dr Mitra added that there are at least 15 areas where differences need to be ironed out. According to him, there is no meeting between state revenue officials and their counterparts at the Centre on fitment (fixation of tax slabs for different goods and services).

“In GST, there are tax brack ets like 12% or 18%. But a lot of products are now in the 15% bracket. So it will go to 12% or to 18%. But these issues yet to be discussed.“

Dr Mitra said due to constant efforts by West Bengal, the Centre had admitted single control in GST for tax payers who have a turnover below Rs 1.5 crore.

“As per the revised guidelines, 90% of the dealers (tax payers) in this category will be under state control,“ he added. There are 22.71 lakh tax payers in this category in the country . The number of such tax payers in West Bengal is around 90,000.

I would not commit a date for GST rollout : The Amit Mitra interview

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Bengal Finance Minister Dr Amit Mitra believes that implementing goods and services tax is not feasible from April. Here is his interview:

How feasible is the April 1 deadline?

There are many issues, at least 15 unresolved, which are critical.For example, the definition of agriculture, definition of agriculturist, what happens to a share cropper? Further, what needs to be resolved is the definition of a state.Now a question that has come up suddenly by the Union government is constitutionally 12 nauti cal miles belong primarily to the Centre and not to the states. Gujarat gets Rs 1,200 crore from ships.Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha and West Bengal have been collecting taxes. There are other issues such as clauses related to arrest and non-profiteering.

 

What about the arrest clause?

It is the most draconian measure. Barring one state, Gujarat, no state has the arrest clause in VAT and it has never arrested anybody .Above Rs 2 crore tax violation will be eligible for arrest but bailable. The minute you cross Rs 5 crore, it is non-bailable. And who gets the power? The tax officer. What kind of power? The same power that a police inspector has.

 

But why didn’t you or others protest?

Several states, including Andhra Pradesh, said this should not be there. Then, the question was let us keep it but then water it down.

 

Why water it down? Why not drop it and make it same as the VAT law?

In West Bengal, tax collection doubled in five years without the power to arrest. States across political parties are of the view that the arrest clause is in violation of ease of doing business…

 

The anti-profiteering clause was inserted to protect consumers. Why the opposition?

The argument made by businesses was that competition should take care of the fact that when we benefit from taxes, if I don’t lower my prices, somebody else will.It may not happen in a monopoly or an oligopoly . That’s where the Competition Commission is supposed to intervene. Now, you are looking at another authority or existing authority? A point made by a large BJP state was how many items among thousands are we going to chase? In other words, it will be cherry-picking resulting in inspe ctor raj. Is this the GST we want?

The Centre has said it will be an enabling provision.

The minute you enable yourself, you open the gate for potential inspector raj by an authority that has not yet been defined in the law.This clause was introduced by Malaysia and it has failed.

 

What about dual control and what is the solution?

The empowered committee came to a unanimous decision presented to the Union FM (Arun Jaitley) in Kolkata and again in Delhi. The consensus was that below Rs 1.5 crore, states should continue to look after all of the business, including goods, deemed goods and services. The central bureaucracy , especially the Central Board of Excise and Customs has 86,000 tax personnel, while the states have 2.65 lakh. The underlying political issue is one of federalism. There is a feeling that if there is dual control, and if the Centre has a say below Rs 1.5 crore, it will end up with the central offices in sub-divisions, who knows even lower than sub-division level.

 

What about tax rates, have officers been able to categorise products?

A call also has to be taken on the nature of the product. The question is who is going to take the call?

For how many items? You are talking about many thousands of items… Not a single meeting has taken place on fitment of products.

 

When is the earliest we can expect GST?

The approach of the central bureaucracy will have to undergo some change. In case of dual control, in the case of IGST, both of them have been objected to by the central bureaucracy . Six meetings have been postponed on the topic of dual control.

 

You are not committing to a date…

I would not commit on a date. I would not commit on a date till we have answers to these questions.

 

Is July feasible if issues are resolved within a month?

Does it appear to you that in a month what remains to be settled will be settled? That will be magical. You can have a sub-optimal, truncated GST with draconian clauses, inspector raj thrown around. Is that what the nation has betted on GST?

 

There is criticism that you are holding up GST because of political issues -demonetisation and arrest of your colleagues?

When we ventured we knew that the nation will take a hit on tax collections… That is the reason we asked for compensation. At that time there was no other economic hit in the picture and then comes demonetisation. Can the economy take two hits simultaneously? We found cesses in the GST Council which will go into a fund. How much? Rs 55,000 crore. Tomorrow, if it is Rs 85,000 crore where will it come from? The Centre has promised nothing. Why can’t the Centre come out and say we will give it from Consolidated Fund of India?

 

There is criticism that you are holding up GST because of political issues -demonetisation and arrest of your party colleagues?

When we ventured we knew the nation will take a hit on tax collections, particularly states. That is the reason we asked for compensation. At that time there was no other economic hit in the picture and then came demonetisation. Can the economy take two hits simultaneously? We found cesses in the GST council that will go into a fund.How much? Rs 55,000 crore.Tomorrow, if it is Rs 85,000 crore where will it come from? The Centre has promised nothing. Why can’t the Centre ay that we will give it from the Consolidated Fund of India?

Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra slams note ban

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“Only an authoritarian government can calmly cause such misery to people,” said Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen on the government’s demonetisation move. Concurring with this thought Amit Mitra, Finance Minister of Bengal said no democracy with a money market has withdrawn 86 percent money from the market.

Dr Mitra said FMCG sales have fallen by 35-40 percent. About 70 percent of secondary steel plants in Bengal are not working after demonetisation. India is seeing recessionary tendency due to this move, he added. It will take six months for the government to remonetise the economy, Dr Mitra said. Economists have also agreed that gross domestic product (GDP) will decline by 100-300 bps due to demonetisation.

Joining the crusade against the currency ban, Dr Mitra said the government was not prepared to implement this scheme. Due to the cash clean-up, informal sector in all states is in deep trouble, he said. On deposits made in Jan Dhan account, he said for political purposes government had leaked that West Bengal ranked number one when on the contrary, the state is ranked number 10.

Talking about the Income Tax Amendments Bill announced by the government on Monday, the economist said the government has admitted its failure by introducing an amnesty scheme for the black marketeers.

Dr Mitra, who is also the Chairman of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Panel, said the indirect tax regime is the biggest fiscal reform in the country and it not a tax rate issue. Since the roll-out of the demonetisation scheme, there are serious concerns over GST rules. The scheme is a second whammy for the states, much bigger than GST process, Dr Mitra said.

Amit Mitra asks Centre to come clean on GST

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In a letter to Arun Jaitley, West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra says Centre concealed crucial information on service taxpayer base from states.

While the states had so far been led to believe that the service taxpayer base was 1.1 million, new data supplied to the state finance ministers reveal that it is actually 3.05 million—almost thrice of what was assumed so far. This, Dr Mitra argues, has unfairly influenced the discussions, especially on the sharing of administrative powers between the Centre and states.

The sharing of administrative powers between the Centre and the states for controlling traders and service taxpayers in a GST regime has been a point of contention.

After the first meeting of the GST council, it was concluded that the Centre will control all the existing 1.1 million service tax dealers. In the case of goods, it was agreed that goods traders with an annual revenue threshold of less than Rs 1.5 crore would be administered by states and anything above jointly by the Centre and states.

However, in the second meeting of the GST council, the states demurred, claiming the minutes of the meeting did not adequately reflect what was discussed; this forced the council to go back to the drawing board on the administrative control of both goods and services.

“The minutes of the 1st and the 2nd GST council meeting clearly records a tax base of around 1.1 million for service taxpayers,” Dr Mitra wrote in a letter dated 28 October, before adding, “Suddenly, we find that the service taxpayers number has escalated to 3.05 million out of which 2.64 million are shown as active taxpayers.”

“This implies that the service tax base has grown 3 times over 2 years. What is even more surprising is that even a month ago this fact was not told to the states,” he wrote, adding that the figures seem an afterthought, surfacing only after the issue of dual control was discussed in the last GST council meeting held on 18-19 October.

In his letter, Dr Mitra also pointed out that the disaggregated data of value-added tax (VAT), excise and service tax base based on thresholds of Rs 1.5 crore and Rs 20 lakh had not been shared with the states so far. He also added that the states were likely to get the updated data on the taxpayer base only by 1 November, which left them only a day to deliberate before the GST council meeting. The data shared with states by the GST council secretariat was updated as of 19 January 2016.

 

KMC service centre on way

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The KMC authorities have decided to build a citizens’ service centre adjacent to the civic headquarters on S N Banerjee Road. The construction will begin in December with an 18-month deadline in mind.

The G+ IV building will be constructed on a 12 cottah plot where the Chaplin cinema building once stood.

Once the building was complete, it would ease the pressure from the headquarters as some of the departments, like the treasury , trade licence and information technology, will be shifted to the new set up.

According to plans, the civic body will open up a whole floor for the citizens’ service centre. This centre will be modelled after some of the cash collection centres set up in different locations across the city .

“We will dedidate a 6,000 sq ft floor to the tax payers who can turn up at the new centre for paying property tax bills. Traders will also be entertained to pay their trade licence renewal fee at the new centre. Once construction is complete, we will offer a single window system for our citizens to avail of different civic services,” mayor Sovan Chatterjee said.