Karnataka is first to introduce e-payment of commercial taxes

The e-payment system of the Commercial Taxes Department (CTD) was launched by Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa in the presence of RBI officials and representatives of public sector banks.

The system enables dealers having Internet accounts to remit their commercial taxes, including Value-added Tax (VAT), Karnataka Sales Tax, Central Sales Tax, Entry Tax and Professional Tax from anywhere. Shortly, the system would be extended to include Luxury Tax, Entertainment Tax and Betting Tax.

Six banks have been enabled to participate in the system, including State Bank of India, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Hyderabad, Syndicate Bank, Canara Bank and Union Bank of India.

CTD officials said more than one lakh cheques a month are received by various offices of the department and these are sent to the agency bank that processes them and remits the amount to the government account. The process involved a huge amount of manual work and delay in realisation of the amount. With the e-payment system in place, dealers can make remittances anywhere, anytime. The reconciliation process is automatic and cases of missing transaction will be eliminated. The officials said the payment of all taxes would be made mandatory for a specified category through e-payment shortly.

Each day at 8 pm, the participating banks which have received the remittances from the tax payers will upload the transaction files with transaction details to the RBI web. RBI, Bangalore will download the files and process them. The transactions will be uploaded by the RBI to the reconciliation website of the CTD.