Revenue collections in Himachal surpass previous year collection by 3 per cent despite pandemic, says CM Thakur

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Friday said that the total revenue collections of the Excise and Taxation Department in the financial year 2020-21 have surpassed the revenue collections of the previous financial year by three percent despite heavy disruptions caused by COVID pandemic.

Chief Minister said that revenue collections in the first quarter were down by 52 per cent, thereafter, shrugging off the disruptions caused during initial months due to pandemic induced lockdown, the revenue collections have constantly grown by four percent, 23 percent and 34 percent in the second, third and fourth quarters respectively. He said that the revenue collections have registered a significant growth of 44 percent in the month of March 2021. Total revenue collections for the month of March 2021 are Rs 1006 crores against Rs 699 crores during the same period of last financial year, he added.

Jai Ram Thakur said that revenue receipts under VAT and State GST registered a significant growth of 182 percent and 31 per cent respectively during said month. He said that a major increase in VAT collections was primarily due to the success of the Legacy Cases Resolution Scheme (LCRS). Under this scheme, the department has overall recovered Rs. 362 crores by disposing cases of subsumed taxes, out of which Rs. 182 crores are collected in March 2021 only, he said.

Chief Minister said that the major reasons for overall growth in revenue receipts have been a revival of economic activities, Government's unlock strategy, better compliance by taxpayers, and better administration by the department. He said that further, a new initiative of the department especially monitoring of field units through performance cards has created a very healthy competitive environment across field formations resulting in greater motivation for officers to beat the assigned targets. Moreover, the department has recently started another initiative to evaluate its own performance using a Performance Card, he added.

Jai Ram Thakur said that the efforts of working units have further been strengthened with enhanced analytical and data-driven intelligence-based capabilities. He said that these initiatives have resulted into the augmentation of State revenue receipts. He said that the department has further identified major focus areas for augmenting the State revenue collections viz. recoveries under Legacy Cases Resolution Scheme, physical verifications of e-way bills, compliance of GST-R3B return filings, recovery of interest for late filing of returns, recovery of ineligible ITC, recovery of tax deficits/mismatches and identification of cases pertaining to tax evasions and erroneous refunds.

( With inputs from ANI )