The West Bengal government proposes to mop up additional revenue to the tune of Rs 351 crore in 2002-2003. Presenting the budget for the next financial year, state finance minister Asim Dasgupta said the government would retain its focus on information technology, telecommunications, agro-industries and entertainment and continue to take steps to revive traditional sectors.
Dasgupta announced cut in taxes on items like cellular handsets, fibre optic cables and film tickets. Jute and tea sectors have also been given tax breaks. But, a blanket surcharge of 10 per cent on sales tax and 0.5 per cent on turnover on second-point sales has been imposed. With this, the finance minister proposes to mop up Rs 351 crore additional revenue.
Tax cuts have come at an opportune time for the tea sector, where agricultural income tax has been slashed from 50 per cent to 45 per cent. Tax set-off on raw material purchases by the vanaspati, oil cake and de-oiled cake producers are expected to boost fortunes of the edible oil sector.
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To encourage the entertainment sector, tax exemptions have been enhanced on lower category tickets while entertainment tax on film tickets has been reduced hacked from 15 per cent to 10 per cent for Bengali, Santhali and Nepalese films, and from 65 per cent to 30 per cent on films of other languages. Taxes on electrical goods and music systems have been reduced from 15 per cent to 12 per cent.
The raw jute purchase tax has also been cut from 4 per cent to 2 per cent. The hosiery sector has been helped with a cut in inter-state sales tax from 2 per cent to 1 per cent.
The state's bustling printing industry also has something to cheer about. Works contracts next fiscal onwards will be taxed at 5 per cent and inter-state sales of printed material at 2 per cent.
The tax on all types of telephones, calculators, transformers and even optical fibre cables have been slahed from 12 per cent to 4 per cent, a move welcomed by telecom and hardware companies like Airtel, Hutchison and Reliance.
The total revenue loss from these measures, Dasgupta said, would be of the order of Rs25 crore in the year.