First LTU to be operational from July 1: FM

Bangalore, Mar 27 (UNI) Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram today indicated that the new concept of Large Taxpayer Unit (LTU) would not be made mandatory on tax payers immediately and the government would wait for the response before taking any decision.

Speaking at a seminar on LTU here, he said the first of the five units proposed for the next fiscal would start functioning from July one and by the year-end all of them would be in place.

The centres chosen for LTU introduction were Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. The remaining parts of the country would be covered in a phased manner, he added.

Mr Chidambaram said more than 843 tax payers across the country pay taxes in excess of Rs five crore and in Bangalore alone the number was 90.

Stating that India was a late entrant to LTU regime with other South Asian nations, excepting Maladives, having already established LTUs. The LTUs functioning in these countries had achieved a fair deal of success in meeting their objectives and have universally led to increased satisfaction among tax payers by reducing their compliance and transaction costs and in bringing more efficiency in tax administration.

LTUs would act as single window facilitation centre for all large entities paying excise duty, corporate tax, income tax and service tax.

Mr Chidambaram said LTUs were meant to be tax payer friendly and all efforts would be made to ensure that tax payment was made easy. He would personally visit all LTUs and review its functioning so that tax payers were not burdened, he added.

Stating that LTU would be mutually beneficial to both tax authorities and tax payers, Mr Chidambaram said avoiding tax would lead to complications among tax payers as they would face stress, apprehension and health problems.

On tax collections, the Minister during the last three years, the Government had witnessed a 20 per cent growth annually on tax collections and even in the next fiscal the same tendency would prevail. Enhanced tax collections would enable the Government to spend more on development and welfare schemes, he added.

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