Mandatory payment of Sales Taxes, Value Added Tax, Profession Tax and State Excise through GRIPS from 1st Oct’ 2014

The State Gov­ern­ment intro­duced on-line receipt of Tax and Non-Tax rev­enue through GRIPS Por­tal in Novem­ber 2012 vide Noti­fi­ca­tion No. 8298‑F(Y) dat­ed 03.10.2012. The modes of pay­ment avail­able to the Tax-pay­ers in GRIPS Por­tal through the Pay­ment Gate­way of the 20 autho­rised Banks are (1) Net-Bank­ing, (ii) Deb­it card through inter­net and (iii) Over the Counter (OTC) Pay­ment. Thus, pay­ment of Gov­ern­ment rev­enue in GRIPS por­tal can be done both on-line and offline.

Pay­ment of State Gov­ern­ment rev­enue elec­tron­i­cal­ly through GRIPS por­tal has the fol­low­ing advantages—

1. Real-time fund flow from the Tax-payer’s bank account to the Gov­ern­ment receipt account in GRIPS with­out any man­u­al inter­ven­tion in case of inter­net bank­ing, and with min­i­mal man­u­al inter­ven­tion in case of NEFT/RTGS and over the counter pay­ment modes;
2. Simul­ta­ne­ous account­ing of the receipt in the Gov­ern­ment sys­tem in favour of the tax payer;
3. Elim­i­na­tion of the chances of mis­match between the amount paid by the Tax-pay­er and the amount cred­it­ed to Tax-payer’s Account in the Direc­torate of Com­mer­cial Tax­es, Direc­torate of Excise, as the case may be,; and
4. No need to vis­it the office of the Direc­torate of Com­mer­cial Tax­es by the Tax-payer.

Keep­ing in view the above advan­tages of the Tax pay­ment elec­tron­i­cal­ly through GRIPS both online and offline, the Gov­ern­ment, for some­time past, has been con­sid­er­ing mak­ing pay­ment of all types of Tax­es under the Direc­torate of Com­mer­cial Tax­es and Direc­torate of Excise through GRIPS mandatory.

Now, there­fore, the Gov­er­nor is pleased to direct that all tax­es under the West Ben­gal Val­ue Added Tax Act, 2003, West Ben­gal sales Tax Act, 1994, Cen­tral Sales Tax Act, 1956 and West Ben­gal State Tax on Pro­fes­sions, Trades, Call­ings and Employ­ment Act, 1979, West Ben­gal Tax on Entry of Goods into Local Areas Act, 2012, and The Ben­gal Excise Act, 1909 shall be paid by the Tax-pay­ers elec­tron­i­cal­ly only through GRIPS Por­tal with effect from 1st Octo­ber, 2014. For the offline mode, the chal­lan has to be gen­er­at­ed through GRIPS and tax deposit­ed in the con­cerned bank. The Direc­torate of Com­mer­cial Tax­es and the Direc­torate of Excise shall take steps to make nec­es­sary arrange­ment for aware­ness of the Tax-pay­ers in this regard.

The Guide­lines issued in this regard vide F.D noti­fi­ca­tion no. 8298‑F(Y) dt.03.10.12, 9668‑F(Y) dt.30.11.12, 10578‑F(Y) dt. 28.12.12, 5533‑F(Y) dt. 09.07.13 and 3435‑F(Y) dt.01.07.14 will apply mutatis mutan­dis. Heads of accounts for deposit of the tax­es through GRIPS por­tal were already men­tioned in Noti­fi­ca­tion No. 8298‑F(Y) dat­ed 03.10.2012.

The Order shall take effect from 1st Octo­ber 2014.