Taxi drivers welcome tax relief on tourist vehicles

Ludhiana: Taxi drivers have welcomed the Punjab government’s move to reduce tax on registered tourist vehicles in Punjab. The state government reduced the tax in a cabinet meeting.The taxi operators, led by Azad Taxi Union, had raised the issue of high tax on tourist vehicles in Punjab in comparison with neighbouring states. They had met the representatives of the transport department various times on the issue.They said that it was a long-pending demand and finally it has been accepted. Now tourist buses having over 13 seats will be charged around Rs 42,000 per year while earlier they had to pay around Rs 1,17,000 per year, the union said.Sharanjeet Singh Kalsi, president of the union, said they had five meetings with senior officials of the department over the issue. Later, the department had constituted a committee to revise the tax rates and now the cabinet has approved the revised tax. He said Chandigarh charges Rs 200 per seat, Himachal Pradesh charges Rs 1,000 and Haryana charges Rs 2,050. However, Punjab was charging Rs 7,825.“We had sought levelling of the tax rate with Chandigarh, but the department did it in line with Haryana,” said Kalsi. Rajinder Singh, general secretary of the union, said: “The state exchequer was suffering a loss due to higher tax. There are 191 registered vehicles in Punjab which have over 13 seats. Of them, only 82 are regularly paying the tax. Large number of Punjab-based tax operators were registering their vehicles in Haryana due to lower tax and such practice was resulting in financial gain to the Haryana state exchequer and loss to Punjab state exchequer.”

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