UP has been registering a steady growth in GST collections, and the rise has been to such an extent that the compensation paid by Centre to the states for revenue loss due to GST implementation has come down from 27% in September 2017 to nil for the months of April and May, 2018 in UP's case. UP's GST collection for April-May 2018 stood at Rs 7,415 crore, going substantially up from Rs 2,927 crore in September 2017, a 150% increase.

Taking note of UP's performance, Union finance secretary Hasmukh Adhia, especially, wrote to chief secretary Rajive Kumar, praising the state's effort in decreasing its revenue gap from 27.1% in September 2017 to 12.5% in March 2018.

UP has increased collections by almost doubling the number of registered tax payers, coupled with 85%-90% tax filing against a national average of 78%.

Officials say that while rise in registered traders and service providers has been a big contribution, the tax department has also intensified monitoring and internal surveillance.

"Before GST, traders with annual turnover of Rs 5 lakh or more were required to register. In GST, the limit has been increased to Rs 20 lakh. In such a scenario, number of registered companies and service providers should have dipped but in UP, it went up from 8 lakh pre-GST to 14 lakh now. Generation of e-way bills has become compulsory and because the system is online, tax evasion has reduced significantly," said Kamini Chauhan Ratan, commissioner, commercial tax.

The department is now making enforcement and surveillance completely online.
Now enforcement officers have to file online reports after intercepting goods and subsequent action. All enforcement vehicles will have GPS and CCTV cameras so that their movement can be tracked from command centre.

"Besides increasing tax revenue, our other concern is to ensure that people are not harassed. Hence, we are increasing surveillance on our own teams. CCTV cameras have already been fitted in nine enforcement vehicles and their feed linked to central command centre. All officers have to wear body cameras so that we can track them during raids. This will ensure that raid norms are followed and will alert us if our officers are under threat during raid," Ratan added.

Officials will have to seek online nod from a joint commissioner for conducting a raid and proof to back the claim. The raid report will also have to be submitted online and the process would become operational soon. #casansaar (Source - TOI)