Author: Tariq Mir
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: December 21, 2003
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=37703
This was the healing touch the state
coffers badly needed. A militant diktat 14 years ago-forbidding payment
of taxes-had seen the Income Tax collections in Jammu & Kashmir drop
to Rs 5 crore by 2000. But as a wind of hope blows through the state, people
are defying threats, lining up to pay their dues. The collection for the
last two years: Rs 230 crore.
From just 7,000-odd two years ago,
the base of income-tax payers in the Valley has swelled to around 30,000.
These include politicians, who remain the biggest defaulters, private entrepreneurs
and obviously state employees.
However, the task of persuading
people to pay taxes wasn't mean, especially for a department that was literally
non-existent in the Valley. It was in late 1989 that various militant organisations
had issued warnings to the public forbidding them to pay taxes. Even payment
of power and water tariff was banned.
As its first target to mop up taxes,
the I-T Department zeroed in on government employees, who at 1.7 lakh in
Kashmir alone comprise a huge number. While their tax is supposed to be
deducted at source, they would get away citing the militant threats. I-T
officials roped in heads of departments, noted academics and doctors to
talk to the employees about the benefits of paying tax.
''We discreetly held camps at key
places and reasoned with them that it was a mistake to default and they
were bound by law to pay tax,'' says a top I-T official here. State employees
account for 55 per cent of the tax collected in the past two years.
The next target was the Valley's
businessmen, about whom information was gleaned from sales tax documents.
I-T officials issued notices to private entrepreneurs to pay up Last year,
the business fraternity added Rs 50 crore to the I-T kitty.
The next group to be tackled by
the I-T Department was Kashmir's political class. The department dispatched
notices to serving as well as former ministers and MLAs to declare their
incomes and file returns. However, here the department met with marginal
success, with ''very few'' paying up.
With an exception. Officials say
the one political leader who paid the tax was Muzaffar Hussain Beigh. Beigh,
not surprisingly, needed no persuasion. He is J- K Finance Minister.
