The government of Rajasthan has set ambitious targets & plans for e-Governance in the state. In fact Rajasthan takes pride in becoming the first state in the country to launch Aadhar based subsidies.
However it is an irony that the IT industry, which is the catalyst in all such projects, is mired by un-necessary problems created due to ambiguity, lack of clarity or knowledge on technical grounds, ultimately leading to misinterpretations by the officers of Commercial Taxes department thus resulting in to undue harassment of IT vendors.
In the recent cases, Officials from CTD have imposed penalty to the tune of 2.5 Crore (penalty & interest are extra) on 7-8 IT vendors for lack of clarity of the IT peripherals & Networking components, like Switches, Networking Enclosures, Web camera etc & the same has been calculated from the sales up to 5 years earlier.
RCTA has constituted a special task force of prominent members and distributors to take up this issue with Government of Rajasthan and has also appointed a “TAX consultant” to address this issue and help formulate the representation and also to take it forward with concerned officials.
RCTA ( Rajasthan Computer Traders Association: An apex body of Computer Traders in Rajasthan ) has taken up this issue with Government of Rajasthan with various authorities including Chief Minister . In the representations submitted by RCTA a comparative analysis of the VAT structures of other states is also given for ready reference so as to represent that IT Equipment & Peripherals including all the networking components & accessories also fall under the same VAT Category as of computers. This is necessary to bring the provisions of RVAT on parity with other progressive states.
Efforts are on to get this issue addressed in an pre-budget all trade meeting to be called by Chief Minister soon .RCTA has requested for required amendments so that IT vendors may not be harassed for similar ambiguities in RVAT schedule as the IT item list is very vast and keeps on increasing every year.
RCTA is quite hopeful and optimistic for positive outcome of the efforts in interest of this trade and growth of IT in Rajasthan.
