Hyderabad: The TS government’s tax earnings have received a boost with increased contributions from horseracing and betting tax, professional tax, luxury tax, entertainment tax, motor vehicles entry tax etc.
The state has witnessed significant increase in tax collections from these sources during the last two years when compared with taxes earned in undivided AP.
The government is collecting 14 per cent tax on horseracing and betting. Periodic inspections and raids conducted by commercial tax officials to ensure tax compliance have also played a role in these sectors fetching good earnings for the government.
The department conducted raids on six out of 24 bookies at the Malakpet Race Course in October 2015. Tax sleuths seized over Rs 50 lakh in unaccounted cash from the possession of the bookies and found huge tax evasion.
These raids created such an impact that the tax collection through horseracing and betting increased by nearly Rs 10 crore in 2015-16, compared with 2014-15.
Similarly, luxury tax evasion by hotels, hospitals, travel agencies, liquor shops was rampant in undivided AP. The TS government has tightened the norms due to which the tax collection has increased by nearly Rs 20 crore in a year.
The department's special drives to check ‘zero business’ also fetched huge revenues with VAT collections witnessing a sharp increase over previous years.
Entertainment tax, which hardly contributed to the tax kitty earlier due to rampant evasion by cinema theatres, clubs, resorts etc, is showing an increase in TS during the last two years.
“The commercial taxes department contributes over 65 per cent of the total revenue of the state. Altogether, eights sectors are being administered by the department for tax collection and all these eight sectors recorded a significant growth in Telangana compared with undivided AP.
The government has earned Rs 27,868 crore from these eight sectors, which is an increase of 12.02 per cent over the last year,” said commercial taxes minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav.
He said earlier VAT and Central Sales Tax remained the only major contributors to the tax kitty but due to the stringent norms adopted by TS government, tax collections in the remaining sectors are moving upwards.
