The Directorate of Commercial Taxes is the largest revenue earning wing of the Government of West Bengal accounting for 70% of the state tax revenue. The directorate is presently administering seven different acts for the implementation of VAT (Value Added Tax). Software Modules related to areas like dealers' master, tax payment, issue & utilization of Waybills, CST related forms, filing of returns, assessment, audit selection and movement of consignments into the state, have been developed under the IMPACT project. Relational databases are deployed with decision support and information management system.

IMPACT (Information Management for the Promotion of Administration in Commercial Taxes), a project of NIC, West Bengal State Unit (WBSU), for building up comprehensive database in order to create an efficient decision support system to combat tax evasion there by generating revenue for the state.

Functional Modalities

In order to facilitate filing of physical returns under one roof, for the dealers in Kolkata, two Central Return Receiving Unit (CRRU) has been set up, one at the Directorate's HQ at Beliaghata and the other at 10, Madan Street, Kolkata 72.

A Computerized Central Registration Cell is in operation at the HQ building, Beliaghata to allow registration of dealers on the same day of submission of application with required documents. Names of newly registered dealers are regularly posted on the Directorate website - www.wbcomtax.gov.in

VAT - e-services

The Directorate has taken the initiative last year itself to reach dealers through a host of e-services. The major one among them is e-filing of VAT Return, which started from 1st of January, 2008. The service allowed nearly eight thousand of the selected dealers to file their Returns online. More dealers are being brought under this fold by way of gradual inclusion in the selection list. e-Payment of Tax has also started recently. The e-Challan number (transaction id) generated is the reference number for all purposes of payment enquiry by the dealer with the directorate. This has been integrated with the e-filing of return. To facilitate further and to bring in complete transparency in the functioning of directorate e-Request of Waybill has also been introduced.

Technology and the Process

An application has been developed and hosted at the State Data Centre of NIC, WBSU using Oracle 10g as the database along with Oracle10g application server. The development platform is Java and Forms are generated in PDF files using Adobe. The application site address is www.wbcomtax.gov.in .

Client computer must have the following facilities installed to access e-filing of VAT Return application

  • Windows-XP
  • Internet Access
  • Internet Explorer v6.0 or above.
  • Acrobat Reader 8.1 or above which can be downloaded from the Departmental portal.

This system is highly secured, user-friendly and interactive with features like, dealer's authentication, online FAQ help etc.

Benefit of e-filing of return

Some important benefits associated with e-filing are

  • Online filing of quarterly returns by the dealers using in-house facility,
  • Highly reliable data as they are received directly from the dealers,
  • Quick generation of various MIS reports as data are entered online,
  • Enhanced checking of avenues of tax evasion as information is available in the required format,
  • Timely filing of returns by dealers as systems is user-friendly,
  • Tax payments by dealers are integrated with the return filing system through e-challan number (transaction id) by the introduction of e-payment of tax.

Back-end integration and MIS support

Data from filed returns are transferred from the Internet database server to the Intra-net server periodically. The information is analyzed to generate following reports to monitor the dealers' payment and return filing behavior.

  • Mismatch Report on Purchase and Sale of a particular Dealer
  • Charge-wise list of dealers Purchase and Sale mismatch report
  • Verify the sales of the corresponding dealer where purchase declared but sales not shown by the seller
  • List Unregistered Dealer to whom sales declared having similar name
  • List Unregistered Dealer from whom purchase is declared

The application of IMPACT so far, notwithstanding inadequacies in infrastructure, has been able to break-through the traditional system and has manifested in net addition of around rupees one thousand crore in each of the years 2006-07 and 2007-08, an achievement which was never reached in the past. The e-services rolled out so far have made the system more transparent and efficient on one hand while giving tremendous relief to the taxpayers on the other. The Detail Project Report (DPR) has been submitted by NIC/NICSI for statewide roll out of the project as part of Mission Mode Project under NeGP of DIT.