PATNA: Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi on Thursday served an ultimatum to all registered dealers and small tax-paying traders (STPT) to become “computerfriendly” before April 1 and also tune themselves to the e-governance mode of the commercial taxes department, failing which they would be “penalised”.
In his address at the `Workshop on e-governance in Commercial Taxes’, organised on the Bihar Chamber of Commerce (BCC) premises here, Modi said the failure on the part of dealers and STPTs to comply with the department’s insistence on their computer literacy would result in non-acceptance of their tax returns by the department’s system.
He, in the same vein, appealed to all non-registered STPTs to come under the ambit of the department’s “compounding scheme” in which they are required to pay tax worth Rs 10,000 if their annual turnover is below Rs 40 lakh.
“It is in the interest of STPTs, since they would be able to avail themselves of the benefits like cash-credit (CC) facility from banks in which government would act as facilitator,” Modi said, adding: “It (Rs 10,000) would be `saral’ return filed by them.”
The workshop for dealers, STPTs and chartered accountants, among others, had been hosted jointly by BCC, International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is a body of World Bank, and commercial taxes department. The notable participants included commercial taxes commissioner Rajit Punhani, IFC representatives Dr Shivraj Kanungo and Gajendra Maheshwari, as well as BCC president O P Sah.
Incidentally, Modi said, the number of big companies paying more than Rs 1 crore as tax every year to the state was around 500.
“Only 70% of companies are complying with e-governance,” Modi said, adding: “I appeal to the remaining ones to take to computers to become friendly with the commercial taxes department’s fully computerised system.”
The department’s officials and IFC and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) representatives heard grievnaces and suggestions of the participants to improve the system, so that tax-payers and the department become fully compatible with the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime that is to come into force in the country.
Read more: Be tech-savvy, Modi tells traders – The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/patna/Be-tech-savvy-Modi-tells-traders/articleshow/7233348.cms#ixzz1ANvTuG1u