SHILLONG: The rolling out of the new tax regime, Good and Service Tax (GST) has not yielded much positive impact in the state as of now.
The State Cabinet on Tuesday was updated about the revenue scenario in the state post the implementation of GST by the department.
Speaking to media persons after the cabinet meeting, Chief Minister, Mukul Sangma asserted that most tax payers who were trying to have access to the system for filing their return were frustrated as system was not working in a manner which would enable tax payers to have comfortable filing of their returns.
According to Sangma, right now only 40 percent of the traders out of 100 percent traders are filing their returns due to incompetence and incapability of the system.
The State Government at the moment has not been able assess the trend of filing of returns post GST as it is not getting returns from all the tax payers.
The State Government however expects that its growth rate under the new tag regime would be around 40 -50 percent as was the case in Value Added Tax (VAT) regime.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister also slammed the Union Government for not allowing Input Tax Credit for building infrastructures like hotels in tourism sectors whereas it has been allowed for all other infrastructures.
“This is something abnormal and it defeats the rhetoric of the Government that it wants to promote nation as destination and promote investment in hospitality sector,” Sangma told reporters.
Sangma assured that the matter would be taken up at the level of GST Council level besides he would also write to the other counterparts on the matter.
It was also informed that there were 25852 dealers registered under VAT regime in Meghalaya and out of 25852 dealers, the number of tax payers registered under GST is 9546 besides 5752 new tax payers have been registered under GST.