The State Cabinet on Tuesday approved the amendment of the Meghalaya Excise Amendment Rules, 2021 to ensure better tax collection by the department.
Addressing media persons, Cabinet Minister Marcuise N Marak said, “There are various brands in our State and we have reclassified (them) for better tax collection. Now, we will have five categories instead of six categories.”
He said that the excise duty is expected to increase by 15% and that the State will be getting additional revenue of Rs 50 crore per year. At present, excise collection is about Rs 350 crore per year.
Commissioner & Secretary incharge of the department Sanjay Goyal said the revenue collection of the department during the last five years was around Rs 1,200 crore.
On the steps taken to increase the revenue generation, Goyal said, “This is one of the major steps as I have mentioned I have rejigged the classification of the brands, we have studied the kinds of classification our neighbouring states are having and what kind of advantage we can draw in classifying so basically when you classify the brand at certain price level and then the brand of those prices we are imposing the excise duty and with this exercise though the impact on the revenue is roughly 15% the impact on the MRP will not be that much impact on the MRP is roughly around 9-10%.”
According to him, this rejigging has helped the department to get around 5% additional revenue without impacting on the MRP.