Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur said that the officers of Excise and Taxation Department should adopt a proactive approach to ensure that there was maximum GST (Goods and Services Tax) collection in the post GST era and also directed the officers to ensure at least 95 percent registration under GST.

While presiding over the state level GST Review meeting held at Mandi today, Thakur said the officers who were performing better would be rewarded and those failing in achieving the desired targets would be penalized.

He said that field functionaries should closely monitor 200 top taxpayers in their jurisdiction right from the circle level to headquarter level. He said 100 percent physical verification of premises of new registrants should also be ensured.

Thakur said that the target should be fixed and achieved in the stipulated time period. He said that since the GST collection was being monitored at the highest level, laxity would not be tolerated in this regard.

He said that GST was implemented from July 2017 and since then the GST collection has witnessed regular growth in spite of the fact that at the national level this growth was very low.

The Chief Minister asked the officers to ensure effective enforcement of GST so as to eliminate any revenue leakages besides enhancing revenue contribution from new services assigned to the states such as banking, insurance, telecommunication etc. to offset the loss due to non-consumption based pre-GST taxes.

Thakur said that the registration of those taxpayers should also be cancelled who have dual registration. In addition to this, he asked to cancel the registration of those contractors who got themselves registered when GST was being implemented but now have become inactive.

Thakur said that the possibility of reorganization of the department to eliminate multi-tasking and creating functional specialization should be explored besides establishing an in-house training centre and imparting national and international exposure to tax officers for capacity building. This will go a long way in reduction of revenue gap, he added.

The Chief Minister directed to raise the matter of those taxpayers before the central GST Commissioner, who come under the ambit of centre but are not filing the returns.

Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister and Excise and Taxation Sanjay Kundu said consultants have been hired from National Informatics Centre Services Incorporated (NICSI) to strengthen Economic Intelligence unit.

The Principal Secretary also informed that issuance of circular on destination principle has been taken up with GST Council and Union Government as to plug the loss due to violation of this principle by taxpayers of adjoining States.

Commissioner of State Taxes and Excise Ajay Sharma made a detailed presentation regarding various initiatives taken by the state government for effective tax collection.

He said that the state has received GST compensation of Rs 1241 crore till date and the total achievement with GST compensation is Rs 5788 crore.

He said that during the current financial year excise collection of Rs 1084 crore, VAT collection of Rs 994 crore and GST collection of Rs 2438 crore. He said that in this way total tax of Rs 4547 crore has been achieved against the target of Rs 4579 crore till November this year.