Punjab ministers, babus to take lessons in tax admn from State

The Punjab administration is set to get some lessons in Gujarati fiscal management as the north Indian state’s government has shown interest in learning the nuances of an efficient tax administration from Gujarat.

A team of Punjab ministers and bureaucrats is to come to Gandhinagar to get a crash course from the State’s Finance Department, though a formal timeframe for the visit is yet to be decided.

Senior Finance Department sources inform that the Punjab government had expressed its willingness to learn from Gujarat at a recently held Joint Working Group meeting of States in New Delhi. Attracted by massive tax buoyancy shown by Gujarat, particularly in the collections of Value Added Tax (VAT), the beleaguered Punjab administration wants to know how Gujarat has managed a smooth transition, inform sources.

Learning the intricacies of computerization of records and digitization of data in the Finance Department would be part of the exchange of ideas between the two sides, say officials. “We are taking VAT returns online. Our total tax collections have more than doubled in the last six years. A team of officials led by Punjab Tax Commissioner would be coming to learn all these things,” informed an official.

Gujarat’s total tax receipts that stood at only Rs 8823.33 crore in the year 2000-01 had crossed Rs 15,000 crore in the fiscal year 2006-07. In VAT collections alone, against a target of Rs 9,000 crore last year, actual collections had reached Rs 12,000 crore on the back of efficient collection mechanism put in place by the Finance Department.