Delhi to make tax admin faceless, Rs 41k cr GST, VAT collections estimated.
The Delhi government will strengthen its Goods and Services Tax administration, making it faceless to boost revenue, Finance Minister Atishi said while presenting the annual budget 2024-25, envisaging Rs 76,000 crore outlay on Monday.
The government will source Rs 41,000 crore through Goods and Services Tax (GST) and VAT, which will be 70 per cent of the total tax revenue of Rs 58,750 crore estimated in budget 2024-25.
In fiscal 2023-24, the GST and value-added Tax (VAT) collections until January 2024 witnessed a growth of 13.96 per cent year-on-year to Rs 31,445 crore, Atishi said.
“Now, the next step of the Kejriwal government is to make the IT infrastructure of GST state-of-the-art and the entire GST Tax Administration faceless,” the finance minister said.
The Delhi government is working on data analytics and automation software in collaboration with IIT Hyderabad. This will help in tracking, monitoring and simplifying the refund process through artificial intelligence and data analytics, besides reducing processing time and errors in files, she said.
The budget estimates of Rs 76,000 crore for 2024-25 was 3.7 per cent less than Rs 78,800 crore in 2023-24. However, it was 1.47 per cent higher than the revised estimates of Rs 74,900 crore in 2023-24.
“The budget estimate was a bit higher last year. But, the final (revised) estimate is 74,900 crore for 2023-24, which has been enhanced by Rs 1,100 crore to estimate the budget 2024-25,” Atishi said in a press conference, pointing that the GST compensation of Delhi stopped in the last two years.
There is no other state in the country, which has not taken a loan to manage its budget deficit after scrapping GST compensation. The Delhi government is the only government that honestly raises its own resources and still remains fiscal surplus despite providing free-of-cost facilities like electricity, water and bus rides to women, she said.