Punjab - Filing of VAT returns set to go online from mid-January  

From mid-January onwards, thousands of dealers in Union territory of Chandigarh would get the additional facility to file their individual VAT returns online. The UT excise and taxation department is busy finalising a software to facilitate shopkeepers and traders file their VAT returns while sitting at their homes. 

Disclosing this to The Times of India, additional excise and taxation commissioner of UT, Manjeet Singh Brar, stated that with this facility, traders and shopkeepers would not have to go to concerned office and stand in long queues to file the VAT returns. They can just visit the related website and file the return in a simple and easy way with a mouse click.

Six months back, the department, on the demand of traders, had made arrangements for filing their returns at city's e-Sampark centres. But there too, the traders had to stand in queues, wasting their precious business time, sources said.

To start with, Brar said, they would ask the traders to deposit the return amounts in designated banks and forward a soft copy of the same to the department for their records. Gradually, the department would begin accepting VAT returns from shopkeepers and traders online saving their time, Brar said.

Source : Times of India - India, dated 03/01/2009