Minister for Finance and Ladakh Affairs didn’t have much difficulty in motivating the Legislative Assembly to pass the grants for Finance, Ladakh Affairs, Planning and Development Departments to the tune of Rs 11170.28 crore to defray the charges which will come in the course of payment during the year ending March 31, 2015 for departments and PSUs under his charge.
However, the Finance Minister has candidly conceded that his department has not been able to make full recoveries of commercial and other taxes from defaulters whose number is computed at 15, 139. The reason that some of the defaulters are missing is not tenable at all and the Government cannot take alibi for not having full particulars of the missing defaulters. The Taxation Department keeps elaborate record of the shopkeepers, businessmen and others who are liable to taxation. These people cannot go amiss in any case nor are they leaving the country to hide in a foreign country and thus save their skin. The fact of the matter is that most of the missing defaulters manipulate their absence and retracing through some stratagem in which even the officials in the department may be involved. Some of them have political clouts which they misuse. Therefore one can say that given the will to pursue the defaulters, the department can lay its hands on them and take steps to recover the taxes. Some of them change the nomenclature of their business concerns and function under fake cover. This should not be difficult for the Government to discover.
Secondly, the plea that in some cases stay orders have been obtained from the court and thus recovery is delayed. It has to be ensured whether defaulters in this category manage procrastination of their cases in the courts so as to water down the impact and with the passage of time manage to shelve the cases against them. We have in these columns already taken up this issue and by now the Government should have taken special steps to expedite the legal process. Indefinite deferment of tax recovery is a loss to the state exchequer and also a blow to the developmental effort of the Government. The House while passing the grants should have put a rider on this item and at least given a time schedule to the Finance Department to settle the arrears with the defaulters within a time frame.
Sometime back, even the State High Court Division Bench, while responding to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) had come down heavily on the Government for its failure to recover Sales Tax arrears worth crores of Rupees from the defaulters. The Court even directed the Commissioner Sales Tax and Inspector Generals of Police (IGPs) of Jammu and Kashmir Zones to draw action plan including lodging of FIRs against those Sales Tax defaulters, who are not traceable and who have given improper/incorrect addresses.
Not to speak of top and well-known business magnates of the State, even the Government and semi-Government organizations figure among the tax evaders giving the impression that they have one and all ganged up to loot the state exchequer to their heart’s content. The loot is in hundreds of crores of rupees and it seems that the looters are hand in glove with authorities. This is a sad state of affairs and bodes ill for the one and all. Significantly, the reason given by administration for non- recovery of bulk of the tax was also that the defaulters have been categorized as “untraceable”.
According to the figures available, the total amount recoverable from non-traceable defaulters is Rs 23.44 crore from Jammu and Rs.78.80 crore from Kashmir division. Keeping in view the large amount of unrecovered amount of tax and also the slow pace of recovery, we can draw the conclusion that there is every possibility of connivance at various levels of administration and Taxation Department.
These defaulters virtually depriving the State from benefits of rapid development and uplifting of the poverty stricken people. How can the wheels of development turn unless there is fuelling and greasing which means the funds that should come uninterruptedly?
We appreciate the measures which the Government proposes to reduce the inconvenience of tax payers and make it a simple exercise. However, we cannot also ignore the fact that tax evasion is a crime and the defaulters against whom cases of evasion exist should be dealt with firmly. But this must be a uniform manner and there should not be singling out of any person or institution.
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