Meghalaya has registered positive growth in tax collection in the last financial year despite the pandemic severely affecting the economic activities in the country and other states, a top official of the Taxation department said on Thursday.
“Tax collections in the year 2020-21 stood at Rs 1526.50 crore (provisional, expected to go up) compared to Rs 1488.37 crore in 2019-20 when GST compensation is not taken into account,” Taxation Commissioner Arun Kembhavi said in a statement.
He said if GST compensation is considered, the revenue collection in 2020-21 stands at Rs 1698.87 crore (provisional) compared to Rs 1589.82 crore in 2019-20 showing a positive growth of 6.86 per cent.
“GST revenue collection in March, 2021 stood at Rs 101.75 crore compared to Rs 58.55 crore in March, 2020 showing a phenomenal growth of 73.78 per cent,” he said
According to the Taxation Commissioner, the achievement was possible due to several reforms implemented in the taxation department and extra efforts put in by the officials of the department to improve the percentage of return submission by the taxpayers, disposal of the assessments and the focus on the recovery of arrears especially from bonded warehouses and petrol stations.
In a first, the department has implemented the Tax Amnesty Scheme through the Meghalaya Settlement of Arrears Act, 2020 which has seen tremendous response from tax defaulters having dues for several years.
The department also shifted the backend operating system for GST from NIC Meghalaya to the system developed by GSTN, New Delhi to further streamline the GST backend procedures.
Kembhavi also said that they are optimistic about achieving double-digit growth in the financial year 2021-22.