Imphal, September 22 2009: The State Government has been suffering losses to the tune of crores of rupees that should be accrued as sales tax, as the exact amount of the sale proceeds recorded by various business establishments in the State could not be known.

An official source from the Taxation Department of the State Government said that although the amount of the sales tax collected by the Department over the last one decade i.e.since 1994-1995 to 2007-2008 has been increasing, the collection had never reached the annual target set by the Finance Department.

In 1994-1995, the Finance Department set the sales tax collection target of Rs 15 crores, but only around Rs 13.56 crores was collected.

Likewise, although the Finance Department set a target of collecting Rs 28.75 crores in sales tax during 1998-1999, Taxation Department, could collect only Rs 19.41 crores.

With introduction of Value Added Tax (VAT) in Manipur since July 1, 2005, the Finance Department kept the target of collecting Rs 70 crores from sales tax in 2005-2006, but a little over Rs 71.16 crores could be collected, the source said, adding that the annual target set by the Finance Department was at the minimum level.

However, the sales tax collection recorded is not in tune with the increasing population and buying capacity of the people.

After the introduction of VAT in Manipur since July 1, 2005, sales taxes have been directly imposed on 170 different items.

Before this, sales tax was collected under the Assam Sale Tax Act, 1947 .

Inspite of the fact that sale tax collection has been the largest income of the State, inability to monitor the sale proceeds recorded by various business establishments has become a serious handicap in realising the sales tax collection.

While the business establishments do not make it a norm to issue receipt while selling a product and the customers do not care to ask for the same, the State Government has been incurring a huge loss from its possible sales tax collection.

As the sales tax to be charged has to be worked out on the basis of the sale proceeds which in turn can be known from the sale receipts, most business establishments restrain from issuing receipt to the customers at the time of selling goods, the source disclosed.

On the other hand, absence of check posts of the Taxation Department along the National Highways and computerised networking to monitor the quantity of goods being brought to Imphal from Guwahati has been another advantage that business establishments have been taking when it comes to collection of sale tax, the source said, adding that taking care of these two aspects would definitely help in successful collection of the sale taxes from the business establishments.

The source also disclosed that in contrary to the required 12 Superintendents of Taxation in the Department, there has been only two of them since December 2007 .

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