More than Rs 40,000 crore in outstanding sales tax, GST and other levies are to be recovered from over 42,000 individuals, the state government said in the assembly last week.
"The state government has to recover outstanding sales tax, Value Added Tax (VAT), and GST of Rs40,221.73 crore as of March 2018," deputy chief minister Nitin Patel, who holds the finance portfolio, said in the assembly in response to an unstarred question by Congress MLA from Siddhpur, Chandanji Thakor.
The dues are to be recovered from 42,675 individuals, i.e. an average of Rs94 lakh in each case.
To put the outstanding dues in perspective, the amount is just lower than the estimated SGST collection of Rs42,750 crore by the state government in the current financial year.
A senior government official said that the outstanding dues were mainly in cases where the individuals or entities had approached courts or filed appeals with higher authorities.
With outstanding tax recovery of Rs13,821 crore, Ahmedabad, the state's business hub, accounted for almost one-third of the total tax dues, the deputy chief minister's reply showed.
It was followed by Vadodara with pending tax dues of Rs5,720 crore and Kutch, which has seen massive investments since the killer earthquake of January 26, 2001, with Rs3,877 crore.
Recovery of Rs3,087 crore in due levies was to be made from Surat, the hub of synthetic textile manufacturing and diamond processing. It was followed by Morbi, the ceramic manufacturing hub of the country, with pending sales tax, GST and VAT dues of Rs2,907 crore.
The reply showed that recovery of Rs1,610 crore sales tax, VAT, and GST was pending in Bhavnagar, Rs1,393 crore in Devbhumi Dwarka, Rs1,187 crore in Bharuch, Rs1,039 crore in Valsad, and Rs923 crore in Mehsana.
"In cases barring those where stay orders have been issued by various authorities, steps are being taken under the Gujarat Sales Tax Act, Gujarat VAT Act, GST Act, and land revenue laws to recover the pending dues," the minister's reply said further.
Action had been taken against 39,240 of the individuals to recover the pending due, the deputy chief minister's reply added.
THE DUES
Action had been taken against 39,240 of the individuals to recover the pending dues. The number of such individuals was 10,911 in Ahmedabad, 6,134 in Surat, 3,043 in Vadodara, 2,676 in Rajkot, and 2,083 in Kutch, the deputy chief minister’s reply added.
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