Telangana commercial taxes officials do not name defaulters

Hyderabad: Commercial taxes department seems to be shielding defaulters by not disclosing their names.

The government had directed the department on November 18 to put the list of defaulters in the public domain immediately to exert pressure on them to pay taxes. It asked the department to seize the assets of defaulters and auction them in case of non-payment thereafter. The department has ignored the order.

The list of ‘best tax payers’ is in the public domain, though. Defaulters owe Rs 1,194 crore, of which Rs 838 crore was from commercial establishments that closed down operations a few years ago.

In the wake of dwindling revenues following demonetisation, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao directed tax earning departments to focus on recovering previous tax arrears.

Following this, then chief secretary Rajiv Sharma held a meeting with commercial tax officers on November 18 to discuss recovery of huge tax arrears from commercial establishments.

It was decided at the meeting to make public the list of defaulters besides taking up an extensive campaign in the media against defaulters by issuing advertisements.

Mr Sharma directed officials to implement these decisions within a week. Nearly a month since, the commercial tax has department failed to implement them.

Officials maintained complete silence over the issue and did not disclose the reasons for not putting the list of defaulters. Commercial tax commissioner V. Anil Kumar said, “We will put the defaulters list in public domain soon. Since the orders to this effect were given by the government, we have to implement them.”