Hyderabad: Eighty-six percentage of traders and business enterprises in Telangana who were paying different central or state taxes until recently have migrated to the new GST (Goods and Service Tax) regime, according to Sandeep M. Bhatnagar, chief commissioner, Hyderabad GST Zone.
As per statistics of the previous fiscal year, there were 13,000 central excise tax registrations, 66,000 service tax registrations and over 2.93 lakh VAT registrations done in Telangana. All of them have switched or are in the process of migrating to the new tax system. These three taxes were subsumed into GST from Saturday.
Mr Bhatnagar further stated that GST implementation will lead to increased revenue earnings from Telangana state. “In the previous year the collection from central excise and service taxes was Rs 14,500 crore. The predictions are that revenue growth will be up by a minimum of 14 percent from the existing figure. So we are positive about this”, he said.
The chief commissioner pointed out that revenue growth is not because of any increase of tax slabs but due to more enterprises and traders coming into the tax purview.
The central taxes office in Basheerbagh was re-christened as GST Bhavan and according to Mr Bhatnagar, Hyderabad office was the first in the country to do so.
He said that officials of the central tax wing and state government will work in tandem for effective implementation of the GST in Telangana.
“The major challenges before them are work delegation, staff training and getting used to the new software etc, but we are geared up for it. We conducted 600 outreach programmes across the state to create awareness on the new tax regime and also established GST Seva Kendra to assist all stakeholders to migrate without hassles,” Mr Bhatnagar concluded.
