PORVORIM: The Department of Commercial Taxes seems to be the biggest defaulter of the State government revenue, as it has failed to recover pending arrears and dues amounting to over Rs 2400 crore, pending for more than five years.
An amount of Rs 1647.19 crore is an arrears of revenue pending in all together four State government departments, of which over 34 per cent has not been collected for more than five years, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has pointed out in its report. Commercial Tax alone comprises of over 74 per cent of the total revenue arrears.
The Department of Commercial Taxes (Rs 1223.84 cr), Electricity Department (Rs 268.77 cr), Public Works Department (95.73cr) and Water Resources Department (Rs 58.85 cr) have failed to recover the pending arrears, which amount to Rs 1,647.19 crore.
Moreover, there are another 2503 pending cases, involving revenue of Rs 1249.02 crore pending with various departments. The number of pending appeals had increased by 107 per cent during the last five years. “The revenue blocked in the appeals had also sharply increased by 575 per cent during this period,” CAG said.
The total revenue pending to be recovered comes to around Rs 2,472.82 crore.
Commercial Tax Department, with the highest pendency, in its action taken report, has said that 752 cases involving Rs 14 crore were pending in revenue recovery court and that efforts were being made to recover the remaining arrears and the dealers were persuaded to pay the dues.
CAG observed that the department had detected 164 dealers, during 2012-13 to 2016-17, out of whom only 93 were registered and the rest were not. CAG also observed that 306 dealers had not paid full amount of taxes payable as per the returns filed by them resulting in non-realisation of tax amount.
