Patna, April 22: The commercial tax department has set itself a deadline of March 2012 to computerise its functioning. If that is done, traders would no longer have to visit the department to get their work done. All four services — returns, tax payments, registration and refund — will go online and traders will be able to access the services via Net.

Presiding over the customary review meeting at the end of the fiscal at AN Sinha Institute of Social Sciences, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi said: “Our aim is to achieve 100 per cent computerisation by the end of March 2012, after which no trader will be required to come to the office to get his/her work done. We want to bring down the manual work.”

Modi said: “From the next financial year, it would be mandatory to make e-payments, e-return, e-registration, serving notices, besides sending text messages to acknowledge payments received from traders. The department has also been directed to use e-mail to serve any notice or information to traders filing returns of more than Rs 1 lakh.”

Stating that the government’s top priority is to tighten tax collections and prevent tax evasion, Modi, who also holds the finance portfolio, said the electronic system would prove beneficial in checking these anomalies. He added traders who owe more than Rs 1 lakh as tax liability would not be issued C-form, which is necessary for conducting inter-state business.

Modi said Kerala and Maharashtra, where there are more than four or five lakh traders, have achieved 100 per cent computerisation.

The computerisation process of the tax department was started in 2006 in all the states but Bihar is lagging behind.

According to sources, under the small dealers tax scheme, any trader having an annual turnover of Rs 40 lakh will now have to make an annual payment of Rs 10,000. These traders will also have the freedom of filing returns once a year instead of every quarter. Expressing satisfaction on the tax collection of the department, Modi said: “We have collected Rs 6,685 crore against the target of Rs 7,124 crore in the last fiscal, which is almost 94 per cent of the target. But the tax collection growth has slumped to 21 per cent from 23 per cent in the past four to five years.

Modi added: “Last year’s Assembly elections, which continued for three months, could be one of the reasons for the slump but it needs to be analysed and officers would have to submit a detailed report in this regard.”

Among the registered traders in the state, there are 417 traders who make payments of more than Rs 1 crore as tax, which means of Rs 6,685 crore around Rs 6,000 crore have been collected from 417 traders whereas the rest is received from traders who deposit tax of a few lakh, Modi said.