Bengal to introduce scheme for tax settlement dispute

West Bengal will introduce a scheme for settlement of disputes for all taxation cases that will benefit up to 25,000 businesses, state Finance Minister Amit Mitra said Wednesday. Mitra said in the Assembly that all tax disputes including entry tax have been included in the scheme.

He said the West Bengal Sales Tax Laws (Amendment) Bill 2018 was passed by the Assembly which will pave the way for the settlement scheme. The scheme will allow one-time payment of 35 per cent for the disputed amount while the same will be 40 per cent for payments made in instalments.

For cases which involves paying penalty, the settlement of the dispute can be made by paying 50 per cent of the penalty amount. "It is a win-win scheme which will benefit the businesses to settle all pre-GST disputes till June 2017 and those that remain unsettled as on October 2018," Mitra told the House.

The scheme will remain open till March 2019. Mitra said the settlement window for pending entry tax introduced last year mopped up around Rs 1,200 crore with extension. Mitra also said that the state will write again to the Centre to bring out a white paper on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation.