Chief minister Siddaramaiah is expected to enhance the outlay of the state budget to Rs 3. 2 lakh crore and is Banking heavily on robust Growth in tax collection, especially commercial taxes.
Siddaramaiah, who will present the budget on July 7, held a pre-budget meeting with all revenueearning departments, including commercial taxes, excise, transport, and stamps and registration. The focus was on mobilisation of Resources to fund the governing partys five guarantee schemes.
In a boost for the government, all revenue heads, which exceeded targets in 2022-23, are showing a bullish trend for the current fiscal. This will give Siddaramaiah ample headroom to enhance targets.
For instance, the commercial taxes department mopped up over Rs 1 lakh crore in 2022-23 as against the original target of Rs 72,000 crore. Signs of phenomenal growth began showing as early as in thesecond quarter. Then chief ministerBasavaraj Bommai, who held the finance portfolio had revised the target to Rs 84,000 crore. But the department exceeded even that, despite the Centre endingGSTcompensation (Rs 16,277 crore) in June 2022.
This has enthused Siddaramaiah who is said to be mulling hiking revenue targets for commercial taxes, which includes GST (goods and Services tax),KST(Karnataka sales tax) on petrol and diesel, and professionaltax, to Rs 1. 1 lakh crore. This means the department will have to mop up about Rs 23,851 crore more than what it collected in 2022-23.