4 months on, state government yet to fulfil budget announcements

Four months on, the Jammu and Kashmir government is yet to fulfil certain budget announcements made by Finance Minister Dr Haseeb Drabu while presenting his maiden budget in the state legislature.

The failure of state government to issue official orders on such budget announcements, which is a pre-requisite for implementation, has left stakeholders high and dry.

The FM in the budget had announced VAT exemption on baby diapers, adult diapers and female sanitary napkins. “But no formal orders were issued for the implementation,” the taxpayers here said.

Following the budget announcement, the pharmacists and dealers began to sell such items on zero VAT from April 1. “But when we went to file VAT returns, we were shocked to learn from the Commercial Tax department officials that government had not issued any formal orders for such exemption,” the dealers said.

“We are in a dilemma. We don’t know what to do. We have sold these items without charging any VAT from April 1. Now the CT department is asking us to deposit the VAT on such items,” Khalid Ahmad of Friends Medical Store, here said.

Ahmad said the dealers were not even clear about whether they should now onwards charge the VAT or not.  “If the state government does not want to give VAT exemption on these items, it should at least announce it through media so that the position becomes clear and dealers are in a position to take a decision.”

“But for the first quarter of this financial year the government should give us the VAT exemption on such items as we have acted as per the announcement made by the Finance Minister in the budget and have not charged any VAT on such items from the customers.”

A number of pharmacists, suppliers and dealers of sanitary napkins and adult diapers, told that the situation had been made precarious for them by the government itself. “If the government had no intention to give any such exemption, it should not have misled the dealers by making such announcement in the budget.”

“It is for the first time I have come across a situation when finance minster announces during his budget speech something but later it is not implemented,” a sanitary napkin dealer said.

He accused the state government of failing even to implement its own announcement.

Talking to us, Additional Commissioner, Commercial Taxes department, Dr Shameem Ahmad said that they had not received any order/SRO from the finance department about VAT exemption on adult diapers and sanitary napkins.

“We cannot exempt VAT unless the finance department issues an SRO in this regard,” he explained.