The West Bengal Finance Department is planning a year-long campaign this fiscal to bring the remaining businesses under the GST ambit.
The Commercial Tax officials claim the main aim is to increase the total tax revenue collection through GST.
In FY 2024-25, the GST collection increased by only two percentage points more than the national average. West Bengal collected Rs 46,893 crore as GST in FY 2024-25, an increase of 11.43 per cent against the National average increase of 9.44 per cent.
The aim is to rectify the situation either through increasing awareness or through resolving the complications afflicting businesses willing to register for GST.
If a business is making or selling a product and has an annual turnover of Rs 40 lakh or more, then GST registration is mandatory. For a service-based business, the annual turnover has to be in excess of Rs 20 lakhs. In addition, any business with an annual turnover of up to Rs 1.5 crore will come under the composition scheme.
In FY 2023-24, the West Bengal Commercial Tax department has tracked GST accounts of 6.85 lakh businesses. There were 54,500 businesses under the composition scheme.
In the last fiscal year, 2024-25, 40,000 new businesses registered under GST. A few got their GST registrations cancelled too. In FY 2023-24, nearly 44,000 businesses got their GST registrations cancelled.
Most businesses whose GST registrations get cancelled normally have incomplete data in the submission application or are unclear about the documents relevant for submission. Some are even missing the relevant documents.
The Finance Department has decided to again reach out to these businesses and even leverage trade associations to increase awareness.
In addition, businesses that have not deliberately registered to evade taxes will be pursued in a more concerted manner.
