Published On : Fri, Mar 27th, 2015

Raid on UCN bears fruit, recovers 17.5 crore (85 per cent) of the financial year end target

Advertisement

Nagpur: After raising the bar of tax recovery to 124 per cent last year, the district administration showed a complete lack of interest this year. The continuous apathy towards recovery has put the entertainment tax department in a fix ahead of March year-end. So, to cover up for its failures and to put pressure on cable operators, a squad raided the office of Universal Cable Network (UCN) in the city on Wednesday. The raid seems to have hit the target as the tax department managed to recover a substantial amount of the total recovery target.

In the last fiscal year, the State government had set a target of 14 crore for entertainment tax for the district. Genuine efforts by the department helped it in surpassing the target, what with the total recovery reaching up to 17.44 crore, which was 124 per cent of the target.

Looking at last year’s accomplishment, the State government increased the target to 20 crore this year. However, the administration showed complete apathy towards tax recovery this year and had managed to complete only 50-60 per cent of the target a week prior to the financial year-end.

The department had started feeling the pressure of achioeving 100 per cent recovery target before March 31. Recovering the remaining 40-45 per cent of the tax in a month seemed like a mammoth task. So to bail itself out of the crisis, the department decided to intimidate cable operators by conducting raids.

The raid on UCN office a day before the ICC World Cup semi-final match was a part of this campaign. The department passed orders to seize properties of 12 operators and arrest eight operators. So effective were the raids that the department recovered 17.5 crore (85 per cent) of the target on Thursday itself. The raid seems to have hit the target as the tax department managed to recovere a substantial amount of the total recovery target.