Hyderabad: A row over commercial tax arrears has cropped up between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh with the AP government seeking an amendment to Sections 50, 51 and 56 of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014. This, however, is being strongly opposed by the Telangana government.
Since the state’s bifurcation, the AP government has been seeking specific amendments in Parliament to rectify certain portions of the Reorganisation Act on the ground that they favoured Telangana at the cost of AP including sharing of assets and liabilities of common institutions listed under Sche-dules IX and X of the Act.
Commercial tax arrears of nearly Rs 4,000 crore was to be paid by traders in undivided AP at the time of bifurcation.
The AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 states that traders will have to pay the arrears to the respective state government as per their territorial jurisdiction, but AP has argued that most traders who owe arrears are in Telangana, especially Hyderabad, and the Telangana government will get a major chunk of arrears if this norm is followed.
The AP government has written to the Centre to amend the Act to ensure sharing of arrears in the ratio of population, at 52: 48, between AP and TS. Telangana does not want the Act to be amended.
The AP government is specifically objecting to the three sections in the Act which state that if the governments in Undivided AP had collected “excess commercial taxes” in advance till the bifurcation of state on June 2, 2014, they should be distributed between AP and TS in the ratio of population (52:48). But if traders owed arrears to the government at that time, they should pay the respective government based on their jurisdiction.
