ADITYA RAJ DAS / NEW DELHI
The All India Tax Advocates’ Forum (AITAF) has urged the Delhi Government to come out with a practical scheme to settle disputes relating to tax cases under the erstwhile Value Added Tax (VAT) regime.
“There are thousands of VAT dispute cases lying before the Delhi Government. Since the introduction of new tax regime of the GST. The government has not appointed necessary numbers of designated officers to settle disputed cases under the VAT,” the AITAF President M K Gandhi said in a statement issued here.
Such an apathy causing lot of anguish in the minds of assesses, especially small time traders whose VAT era tax dispute cases are yet to be settled, Gandhi– a noted tax consultant said.
To overcome this problem, Gandhi suggested that the Delhi Government could emulate the example of the West Bengal government which had already introduced a scheme for settlement of disputes for all taxation cases prior to the introduction of the GST.
The West Bengal government has got the West Bengal Sales Tax Laws (Amendment) Bill 2018 passed by the Assembly which will pave the way for the settlement scheme.
The scheme will allow one-time payment of 35 per cent of the disputed amount while the same will be 40 per cent for payments made in installments. For cases involving payment of penalty, the settlement of the dispute can be made by paying 50 per cent of the penalty amount.
“Such a scheme will be a win-win situation for both assessee as well as state as it will settle all pre-GST disputes of the assessee till June 2017″, and the state will get its revenue” the AITAF Chief suggested.