At present, the commercial tax collections, including entertainment tax, stands around Rs 20,000 crore annually, which forms almost 75 per cent of the total tax revenue by the state.

“We are confident our tax collection would double to Rs 40,000 crore per annum under GST, as we would also get the share of the service tax collections,” UP principal secretary (tax and registration) Desh Deepak Verma told Business Standard.

He maintained since UP was basically a consumer state, it stood to gain under the proposed uniform tax regime.

“Even under the Value Added Tax (VAT), which was implemented in UP from January 1, 2008, our tax revenue did not fall unlike other states and we posted an increase of 22.5 per cent,” he added.

Going forward, the government is hopeful of keeping the growth momentum going in the current fiscal.

GST, which was earlier proposed to be implemented from April 1, 2010, has been postponed for another at least six months, since some states had expressed their inability to implement the system, besides there were certain issues to be ironed out.

“Even for us, it would have been difficult to implement GST from April 1, since we have recently moved on to the VAT system and to adopt another system at his juncture would have proved rather tedious,” he noted.

West Bengal finance minister Asim Dasgupta is the chairman of the central panel on GST, which comprises the finance minister of the respective states.

Source: Business Standard, India, dated 24/02/2010