Taxation dept should pay our dues, demand bizmen

TNN | May 6, 2020, 07:27 IST

Ludhiana: With each day of the lockdown passing the financial condition of the businessmen is deteriorating due to halting of economic activities. With funds for resuming factories drying up, businessmen are now demanding that the state taxation department pays them their dues, which are stuck in form of VAT and State GST refunds.
According to businessmen, the VAT refunds worth crores are pending with the department for years and they cannot wait for any longer now to get back these refunds.
Speaking to TOI, Gurmeet Singh Kular, president of Federation of Industrial and Commercial Organisation (FICO) said, “Capital and savings of businessmen are eroding due to the Covid-19 lockdown and our financial position is deteriorating with each passing day. But inspite of all these hardships the state taxation department has failed to pay back our own money stuck with the department in the form of GST and VAT refunds. In fact, pending VAT refunds are now becoming an embarrassment for the government as well since its been years that VAT system was scrapped but till now refunds worth crores related to VAT are pending with the state taxation department”
Kular also added, “A few days ago we also organised a webinar with the state taxation commissioner Vivek Pratap Singh and other officials and raised the issue of pending VAT refunds. We apprised them that even after the completion of assessments & issuance of various circulars in the previous times, refunds have not been processed. Due to pendency of refunds, shortage of working capital has pushed industry in the trap of loans & interest thereon, leading to the vicious circle of capital erosion.”
According to Manjinder Singh Sachdeva, senior vice-president of FICO, “State’s share of GST, which is known as state GST (SGST), is not being refunded on time to the businessmen, which is causing huge problems for us as these pending refunds are industrialists’s own money and not a grant or subsidy. It is our request to the state taxation department and government to take urgent notice of the refund related problems so that industry can survive these harrowing times.”
According to Rajat Dhingra, another industrialist, “In addition to disposing of pending VAT refunds, the state GST department should also consider waiving penalties and surcharges for various mistakes of the assesses and should also consider offering interest on the late processing of GST and VAT refunds.”