West Bengal VAT norms ready

The draft of the amendment bill for the West Bengal VAT Act 2003 will be placed in the official website of directorate of commercial tax in a day or two, said C M Bachhawat, commissioner, commercial taxes, government of West Bengal.

"There is a possibility that the amendment bill of the existing value added tax (VAT) act for the state will be placed at the official website," said Bachhawat, at a meeting on 'Implication of VAT' organised by the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The directorate of commercial tax might also be placing a booklet named 'VAT at a glance' on the official website providing a important information about VAT, informed Bachhawat.

The success of the VAT regime will largely depend on the speed at which credit refunds are made, admitted Bachhawat.

"The success of VAT will depend how expeditiously we can refund the claims made at our office. Though there has been a time limit for three months, we hope to settle all the refunds in a much shorter time," he added.

VAT will much depend on document verification and least amount of physical interactions of the government officials and the citizen, noted Bachhawat.

"There shall be significant decline in activities related to assessment whereas document verification will increase manifolds,' he said.

Few cases will be taken for audit, he added.

Speaking on the existing assessments of certain forms under central sales tax (CST), which is supposed to be removed in phases, he said that within a short period of time the directorate shall come up with a response as how to minimise assessments under VAT till CST is not phased out completely.

Assessment and audit wings of the directorate will be completely delinked.

The directorate will therefore be concentrating on time bound response of credit refund provided there is timely submission of returns.

Though not mandatory according to the proposed tax structure but computerised accounting of the dealers and manufacturers shall largely benefit the directorate to facilitate the act of cross verification of the documents.

The directorate has organised around 1000 meetings meeting with dealers, chambers of commerce and other public platforms for addressing issues related to VAT.

In collaboration with BNCCI, directorate will also be organising another interactive session on March 28 and 29, said S N Nundy, president, BNCCI.