<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For a state that mostly depends on import of most of its essential items, the unchecked upward spiral of prices spells disaster to the low income and daily wage earners in the state and this is a serious matter. There have been various organisations which have aired concern over the ‘unchecked’ upward spiral of prices of essential commodities but the authorities responsible have somehow remained either reluctant or shy of doing what needed to be done to control prices. It is a fact that prices of various commodities in Dimapur are subjected to the inflationary trends caused, not by market forces but non-market forces in the form of various state and non-state actors who have been literally fleecing all and sundry through unauthorised\/illegal and unabated taxation. These are the unwanted trends that have caused upward escalation of prices. The “state actors” as the name implies, are state government departments such as forest, excise, geology & mining, veterinary & animal husbandry, Dimapur Municipal Council and taxes departments which justify their dubious activities as responsibilities under the guise of collecting “authorised taxes” such as royalty on mineral and forest produce, animal health, sales tax or municipal tax. State levy tax on vehicles carrying minerals or forest produce or excise items etc. The taxation department also collects tax from vehicles on taxable goods. The veterinary & animal husbandry department also collects tax on every vehicle carrying livestock or poultry products. The amount of taxes collected in a day is huge and the approximate amount could be anywhere between Rs.10 lakh to Rs.20 lakh in a day. Again, there are those “non-state actors” such as nearly a hundred unions and over nine Naga Political Groups(NPGs) who have made tax collection as their main activity. NPGs also collect tax from every vehicle entering Nagaland and the rate depending on the number of wheels. A truck with six wheels is charged around Rs.15,000 and this increases if trucks have more wheels. Even the state police personnel deployed at check gates collect “unauthorised taxes” from drivers of trucks before allowing them to pass through. There have been far too many write ups in the local media about the vain efforts of some well meaning CSOs to discourage illegal and unabated collections at inter-state border gates as well as within municipal areas. It may be recalled, that the most significant decision that the state government made was in 2009 and later, 2012 when the chief secretary issued an executive order banning all forms of cash collections, in any manner, be it fee, welfare tax or any other tax under whatever guise. Nagaland Voluntary Consumer Organisation (NVCO) had in 2009, demanded that the State Chief Secretary enforce the order banning the collection of cash and taxes by any organization or individual, including government departments such as Police, Excise, Forest and Taxes Departments, at the check-gate or in any part of the highway, be strictly implemented. It may also be recalled that the Gauhati High Court on June 3,2014 prohibited unions\/associations\/ federations etc from collecting cash under the plea of fee or donation at national or state highways besides and establishing any collection\/ information centres along the highways. These are the “agencies” which are responsible for upwards spiral of prices. In order to regulate prices, the government has to act without haste otherwise, such illegal and unacceptable taxes will become entrenched and stagnate the much needed economic growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Right to collect<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}