Chief secretary conducts video conference hearing in PCBs ₹459 crore GST case

 









The Pune Cantonment Board (PCB) chief executive officer (CEO) attended an hour-long briefing over video conference on Wednesday, in the ₹459 crore Goods and Service Tax (GST) case. Senior officials of the state government under chief secretary Debashish Chakrabarti were present.

PCB CEO Amit Kumar said “ We have given our representation to the chief secretary and now the matter is with the state government. We have pointed out that the precarious financial condition of the board for the past many years has hit all the development projects. For developments to take place, LBT funds which are due will help us tide over the worst financial crisis of the board . Currently the board is starved of funds and citizen work is getting affected due to the financial crisis.”

After hearing counsel for parties in the case for a considerable length of time , the court had granted the reliefs prayed for by the petitioners and the PCB has been given an opportunity to make representation within a period of two weeks to the chief secretary. The state of Maharashtra has been directed to dispose of the representation within two months after giving an opportunity to the petitioners of being heard.

Prior to 2013, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had been collecting octroi and PCB was getting a share from PMC .Subsequently, the state government abolished octroi with effect from April 1, 2013. Further as per notification in 2013, the PMC started collecting Local Body Tax (LBT) instead of octroi within its jurisdiction. There is no revenue sharing agreement between PMC and the PCB from April 1, 2013.

Under section 71 of the Cantonments Act,2006, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) authorised the board to impose LBT through a resolution dated June 4, 2015 and the board was able to generate revenue to the tune of ₹88 crore per annum. On April 12, 2017,Goods and Service Tax (GST) was enacted by the central government and implemented with effect from July 1, 2017.

Due to the annual revenue loss to the tune of ₹90 crore, a self sufficient Cantonment Board has become a deficit Cantonment Board and is presently in such a precarious financial condition that the board is not able to meet its mandatory expenses on account of salary, pension, the development works and maintenance of civic amenities has also been adversely affected.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Centre appeals against ruling on levy of GST on maintenance charges to resident welfare associations

Image
  The Centre has preferred a writ appeal before the Madras High Court against a single judge's order that flat or villa owners paying more than ₹7,500 a month towards maintenance charges to their residents’ welfare associations must pay Goods and Services Tax (GST) at the rate of 18% only for the amount exceeding ₹7,500 and not for the entire monthly contribution. Justices T.S. Sivagnanam and Sathi Kumar Sukumara Kurup on Wednesday allowed an application filed by the Centre to dispense with production of a certified copy of the judgment passed by Justice Anita Sumanth recently and directed the Registry to list the appeal for admission in the usual course. Justice Sumanth had in July this year quashed an order passed by the Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) on June 21, 2019 as well as a consequent circular issued by the Department of Revenue under the Union Finance Ministry on July 22, 2019 since both of them had insisted upon collecting GST for entire monthly contribution. The jud
Read more

Seven key things to know before filing income tax return (ITR) for FY21

Image
  The last date to file income tax return for the financial year 2020-21 has been extended to September 30, 2021. Although there is more than two months left for the deadline to end, it is always recommended to complete the task as soon as possible and not to wait for the last minute. Worth mentioning here is that the income tax department last month launched a new e-filing portal (www.incometax.gov.in) to speed up the processing of tax returns. The I-T department will soon launch a mobile application, having all the features of the new portal. This year taxpayers have to take care of the following changes in the ITR filing process. 1) A new utility named JSON has been launched for filing tax return forms for FY21. At present, only three forms, ITR 1, 2 and 4 have been released. These new forms will import pre-fill data such as personal details, salary income, dividend income, interest income, capital gains and all the information available in Form 26AS. 2) Taxpayers will have the opti
Read more

Income Tax Return or ITR for FY20 Can Be Filed Till May 31

Image
  n the wake of severe Covid-19 pandemic, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has decided to extend timelines of various tax compliance dates on Saturday. “In view of the adverse circumstances arising due to the severe Covid-19 pandemic and also in view of the several requests received from taxpayers, tax consultants & other stakeholders from across the country, requesting that various compliance dates may be relaxed, the Government has extended certain timelines today," the ministry of finance said in a statement. The move is aimed at mitigating “the difficulties being faced by various stakeholders," it further added. The “relaxations are the latest among the recent initiatives taken by the government to ease compliances to be made by the taxpayers with the aim to grant respite during these difficult times," it mentioned in a notification. “It’s a welcome move to extend the timeline of various tax compliances as the country is struggling with severe second wave
Read more