Bhubaneswar, Mar 29: It has been decided by the Odisha government that all border unified inter-state check gates except one at Nalda will be abolished from Apr 1, 2017. This decleration was made by the Finance minister Pradip Kumar Amat in the assembly. The check gate at Nalda bordering Jharkhand will be operated by the Steel and Mines department only for minerals.
Around 22 check gates had been established under the Odisha Sales Tax Act, 1947. They were functioning under Odisha Value Added Tax Act, 2004 to prevent or check avoidance or evasion of tax and not collection of tax. Apart from Commercial tax organisation, other departments such as transport, forest and excise and others also use the unified check gates for enforcement purpose.
Amat said that the government has received problems from different quarters that these check gates hinder the movement of passenger and goods vehicles thus creating traffic jams. Also corrupt practices and harassment involving some outside elements at these check gates have also been reported. There has been a paradigm shift in administering taxes with the introduction of VAT in 2005 as compared to Sales Tax regime and so all types of statutory forms like way bill, c-form and others are issued online. E-way bills are prefilled way bills and the transaction through e-way bills are captured online in the VATIS and thus the information is available to the commercial tax organisation and be cross checked with return in the system itself. The Finance minister also pointed out that there has been huge development in road communications. Roads have been constructed and by-passes have been created. With so many different routes available, a limited number of check gates on specified routes have become less effective in terms of detecting and preventing tax evasion. Hence, with technological changes, the mode of enforcement of various laws needs to be changed.
