He told newspersons after attending a district-level review meeting of the Commercial Taxes Department here on Tuesday that the e-filing facility would simplify the procedures and make the scrutiny of records easier and more efficient.

He said that as of now, the traders were submitting the tax returns in specific forms in the offices concerned every month and this caused a lot of inconvenience to them. Besides, scrutiny of the documents becomes difficult since most of the traders are submitting their returns in the space of a couple of days.

The e-filing system will help get rid of tax evasion and plug the loopholes in verifying the self-assessment statements submitted by the traders. The Government will bear the expenses for data entry incurred by the Akshaya centres. The software for the purpose will be developed within the next three months.

The Minister said that as many as 30,000 sales tax cases were pending before the department and these included appeals involving Rs 1,500 crore and stay orders issued by the Government as also by courts. By vacating the orders, the department can recover an amount of Rs 272 crore.

He said that all the cases pending till 2005 would be settled within three months by redeploying department staff and setting up more appeal benches under the amnesty scheme. The tax arrears of the public sector undertakings, too, would be collected as part of the drive, he added.

The Minister made it clear that shops would be raided only on detecting prima facie cases of tax evasion. There is urgent need to intensify tax collection to meet the additional expenditure for creating physical infrastructure and reducing revenue deficit, he said.