Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi addresses the workshop on e-governance in VAT administration at a hotel in Patna on Friday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, Dec. 16: Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi today stressed strengthening of information technology infrastructure in commercial taxes department to check tax evasion and corruption.

The government has set March 2012 deadline to complete the computerisation of the department.

“It has been found that manual intervention cannot stop tax evasion or corruption. If we have to weed out these shortcomings we will have to strengthen the IT network in the department. For this very reason we have decided make the department fully computerised by March 2012,” Modi said.

Modi, who also heads finance and commercial taxes departments, was addressing a workshop on “e-governance in VAT administration”, jointly organised by commercial taxes department and World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.

Officials from the commercial taxes department — Vinod Advani (Gujarat), P.K. Patra and Sahdev Sahoo (Odisha), Murukesh Kumar and Thyagaraja Babu (Kerala), Vikas Kulkarni and Rajendra Bhagat (Maharashtra) — attended the workshop.

Rajul Awasthi, a senior tax specialist, investment climate, International Finance Corporation, Rajit Punhani, the commissioner of commercial taxes department, and Bihar Industries Association president KPS Keshri were also present at the workshop.

Modi said strong IT infrastructure base is a must for successful implementation of goods and service taxes, which would replace VAT and central sales taxes.

“We want to evolve such a system where no trader is required to travel to the office to get his/her work done. We want to do away with manual work completely. Everything would be done through computers,” the deputy chief minister said.

Stating that the process to computerise the department was started in 2007, Modi admitted that Bihar is lagging behind in comparison to other states.

“I had directed the department two years ago to take details like PAN, e-mail, mobile numbers from the dealers so that the department could use text messages as a medium to serve notices, reminders about the payment of taxes. It (SMS service) has now become obsolete,” Modi said.