Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh government has proposed a series of initiatives to streamline its taxation system and to mop up maximum tax revenues.
According to Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, a special drive of commercial taxes department has registered a higher rate of tax collection in the Andhra Pradesh State government. He said on Thursday that the special drive in all the 13 districts had brought in cash flows registering collection rates of 90 to nearly 96 per cent during the months of July and August in the current fiscal year.
The special drive had also yielded Rs 85.63 crore, old arrears to the department.
There have also been arrears which could not be collected due to litigations at various stages in different courts across the State. To realise these pending arrears, the department had submitted proposals to the government to appoint a panel of standing counsels and an exclusive Advocate General for the Commercial Taxes department, to bring the pending litigations to their logical conclusion, he added.
The Finance Minister said the department has also proposed to introduce an invoice-based tracking system to curb the false tax claims of input tax credit by the dealers. The proposed tracking system would mandate both the seller and the buyer to upload their invoices to the departmental portal for verification. Uploading the invoices would instantly generate reports of any mismatch in the tax claims and enable officials to detect false tax claims. For this purpose, amendments to the Andhra Pradesh Value Added Tax Act (APVAT) were proposed.
He said the department has also devised to place an IT-enabled monitoring system in both the integrated and boarder check posts.
Registration of transporters would be made compulsory, and they would be asked to enter the data of good in transit on their own and to generate way bills. This department expects to reduce the work load on the officials working in boarder check posts and to avoid data entry errors. Ramakrishnudu said another proposal was also made to the government to setup a Research and Development wing to analyse the trends in the Tax and GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product) ratio, and its implications with reference to the optimum revenue potential in the State. To further streamline the taxation methods for increased revenue in the State, the department has proposed to the government for amending APVAT Act, 2005 and APVAT Rules, 2005.
