To bring more businesses under GST, the West Bengal Finance Department is initiating a one-year campaign during this financial year.
To increase the total tax revenue collection through GST is the main objective, commercial tax officials claim.
The GST collection in FY 2024-25 grew by only 2% points more than the national average. In FY 2024-25, West Bengal collected Rs 46,893 crore as GST, an upsurge of 11.43 per cent against the National average increase of 9.44 per cent.
The objective is to spread awareness towards the situation to improve and solve issues for businesses that desire to enrol for GST.
GST registration is obligatory if a business is making or selling a product and has an annual turnover of Rs 40 lakh or surpasses. The annual turnover needs to be more than Rs 20 lakhs for a service-based business. A GST composition scheme shall be applied if any business has a turnover of up to Rs 1.5 crore.
The West Bengal Commercial Tax department in FY 2023-24 monitored GST accounts of 6.85 lakh businesses. Under the composition scheme, there were 54,500 businesses.
40,000 new businesses registered under GST in the last financial year, 2024-25. Also, some of the GST registrations were cancelled. Nearly 44,000 businesses got their GST registrations cancelled in FY 2023-24.
There were incomplete data in the application submission or incorrect documents for submission by the businesses whose GST registration was cancelled. Some also miss the pertinent documents.
The finance department has proceeded to approach businesses and even takes the support of trade associations to increase awareness.
Against the businesses, strict action must be taken who intentionally do not register to evade taxes.
