Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 7: The State Tax Department today made it clear that the drive launched by the Department for inspecting businesses and checking e-way bills is to prevent large-scale tax evasion noticed under GST.
“While the share of J&K GST to total GST of all the states is 1.2%, the compliance level in the State is only 0.27 %,” said a spokesperson of the State Taxes Department in a statement issued here today.
He said the citizens should be aware that while they are paying legitimate GST, the sameshould reach the Government accounts. “The departmental assessment has revealed around 30% leakage in the process,” he said and added that out of the total registered 92000 dealers in the GSTN, till last month only 52000 trade and businesses were filing GST returns regularly.
“With the increased enforcement activities by the department, now 72000 trade and businesses have filed returns for the month of October 2018,” he said and added that in 70% of the cases, where inspections have been carried out by the Department grossviolation and tax evasion have been detected.
“Sustained efforts of the department against defaulters have resulted in a substantial increase in the monthly IGST settlement of the State. The State received an IGST settlement of Rs225 crore on an average during the previous months. However, with the action against the defaulters, the IGST settlement for the month of October has gone up to Rs265 crore,” he said.
The spokesman said that the Chambers of Commerce have wrongly misinterpreted toll tax as if it is levied in contradiction of GST regime. “Toll tax is levied consciously to promote industrial development in the State as a policy tool,” he said and added that the Chamber has wrongly accused the State Taxes Department of interfering in cross-LoC trade while as the department has not interfered in the trade in any manner till date.
The spokesperson further reiterated that investigation of records and checking of e-way bills would continue till such time the trade and businesses start complying the GST law, file returns in time, generate proper invoices and deposit the tax to the department timely. “In none of the cases where teams of the department have conducted investigations, any misbehavior on the part of staff of the department has been reported,” he said and added that the investigation teams have been led by senior officers of the department and the lower staff have been wearing proper uniform in order to ensure lest anybody in civil dress should create confusion by way of entering or intentionally joining the team.
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