Don’t ask for bills,pay lump sum tax on rail goods: Industrialists

Interestingly,the industrialists have put forth this demand via the chairman of Traders’ Board N D Ratti and they have asked officials to calculate a lump sum tax per container on the goods coming via train. Sunil Mehra,general secretary of the Traders’ Board,said,“This can end the problem of peti mafia up to a great extent where excise officials are reporting loss of revenue worth crores.”

Asked about this demand of the industrialists,Assistant Excise and Taxation Commissioner T S Sidhu categorically said,“This is not a viable solution. Even if the bills are not available,industrialists need to declare goods and a tax has to be charged accordingly. We cannot accept the demand of charging tax lump sum without checking the goods in the container. The tax structure on each good is different,ranging from 1 to 12.5 per cent and,moreover,it can lead to smuggling of any type of goods in the state. This has not gone well with the officials and we refused it. Now the industrialists are free to discuss it with the government or higher officials.”

It needs to be mentioned that penalty on goods which come via railway station without paying tax crossed Rs 2 crore till October itself and last year it was Rs 75 lakh in the whole of the financial year. So tax evasion is huge and,hence,industrialists want to run away from paying actual tax,said officials.

Industrialists have demanded quashing of FIRs in bogus billing cases and only charging of penalties. This was also not accepted.