With the traders’ stir in Maharashtra over local body tax (LBT) incurring a loss of about Rs 750 billion till date, the state government has warned the traders who have not yet registered for LBT. They said that they may either have to pay five times more tax or stop their business in the state, reports TOI.
Till the deadline of 30 April, only 62,000 traders in Pune city had registered for LBT, and the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has collected only Rs 1 million as LBT. Octroi, which has been scrapped in the state, used to generate Rs 30 million revenue every day for PMC and about Rs 1 billion a month.
Even though the Maharashtra government has increased the minimum turnover limit for LBT from Rs 0.1 million to Rs 0.3 million, this has not convinced traders to accept the tax.
The state chief minister has also assured the traders that LBT will be phased out once the goods and services tax (GST) comes into effect in India. However, it has been three years since a proposal to implement GST was presented in Parliament and its fate is still not clear.
Federation of Associations of Maharashtra (FAM) told the government that the trading community will not register for LBT and those who have already registered will take back their registrations from the municipal corporation.
“As many as 400 shops in Lamington Road and other electronics markets have kept their shutters down in support of the protest,” JP Singhania, president, All India Radio and Electronics Association, west zone (AIREA WZ) told Electronics Bazaar.
By Electronics Bazaar Bureau, South Asia’s No. 1 electronics B2B magazine
