Amaravati boosts Vijaywada tax, AP Govt earned Rs 19 lakh more from Vijaywada alone

Hyderabad: Even before construction of the capital city Amaravati has started, revenue from luxury tax in Vijayawada has increased in recent months.

In the last two months, the government has earned Rs 19 lakh more from only Vijayawada city while the revenue from luxury tax from Visakhapatnam came down.

Vijayawada –I division got Rs 12.04 lakh and Vijayawada II division got Rs 6,69 lakh more revenue in the last month.

Officials say that the revenue spurt is because of the increase in the number of VIP visitors to the capital area.

The AP government is expecting more revenues from Vijayawada divisions once construction of the capital city starts. In the previous financial year, the government had earned Rs 4.39 crore from luxury tax.

Read: Scrutiny on exemptions of goods

This year, it expects more than Rs 5 crore according to present growth. And once construction of the capital starts, this may go up further.

However, revenue from profession tax has fallen after bifurcation. In the previous year, the state government earned Rs 32.27 crore from professional tax, but this financial year, officials estimate that revenue from profession tax will only be Rs 31.20 crore. All major cities of AP like Kurnool, Kakinada, Eluru, Kadapa and Vijayawada have seen a dip in profession tax collections.

Officials meanwhile say that there should be no reason for the professional tax revenue to decrease, as the professional tax base is always expanding.

They say that it should be verified whether there are arrears to be collected in profession tax both in the cases of enrolment and registrations.

There’s also a short fall in entertainment tax. For this, officials suspect misrepresentation of high-budget movies as low-budget ones.