Bill passed to ensure healthy revenue collection

KOLKATA: The West Bengal Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2022, was passed in the state Assembly on Wednesday to further strengthen financial discipline and ensure healthy revenue collection.

Chandrima Bhattacharjee, state Finance minister said that the Bill has been brought for making amendments to the West Bengal State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employment Acts 1979, West Bengal Goods and Services Tax Act 2017 and West Bengal Transport Infrastructure Development Fund Act 2002.

The Centre has brought changes in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) act and so the change in Bengal was imminent for parity with it.

"We have introduced the provision for Professional Tax deduction at source, by inserting a new section 4 A to minimise the scope of non-compliance or avoidance of payment of tax by allowing the payment-making authority to deduct an amount on account of Professional tax from the amount payable to a supplier of goods or services or both without affecting the law-abiding persons. There was also a disparity between provisions of late fees and penalties for late filing of returns, which has been streamlined in this Act." Bhattacharjee said.

Reacting to the Opposition BJPs submission that the Bengal government has resorted to taking too much loan for running social welfare schemes like Swasthya Sathi, Lakshmir Bhandar, the minister argued that Bengal is a welfare state and the social welfare schemes are necessary for the empowerment of women.

"Every state has to take a loan but Bengal has always maintained fiscal deficit and so to compute the gross borrowing limit for the state for the 2022-23 fiscal, the Finance ministry had requested to amend the West Bengal Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act for availing the enhanced borrowing ceiling for this ongoing fiscal. We had fixed the limit of fiscal deficit as 4 per cent of GSDP during the year 2022-23, which was 3 per cent of GSDP earlier," Bhattacharjee said.