AP mulls over rate cuts to boost tax base

The minister for commercial taxes, K Vijayarama Rao, today said that the state government was prepared to bring down the tax levels, if the overall mobilisation and collection of revenues could improve with such a move.

Addressing the state-level conference of deputy commissioners(CT) and statistics wing here, the minister called upon the officials to identify such areas where reduction in taxes would provide additional impetus to the overall revenue collection, and bring them to the notice of the government.

In this regard, the minister observed that unrecoverable arrears were becoming an un necessary burden on the commercial taxes department.

Though the proportional achievement of the targets for the current financial year is a bit lower, the minister exuded confidence saying that the department would be able to achieve the remaining targets in the next four months.

Against the proportionate target of Rs 6,010.66 crores up to November-end, only Rs 5550.15 crore had been collected by the commercial taxes department, leaving a huge gap of around Rs 460 crore.