Representatives of various trading associations in the State on Tuesday put forth many demands to the State government during the pre-budget meeting organised by the Finance and Commercial Taxes Departments. Most of the organisations urged the government to simplify the VAT procedures which are cumbersome to the traders on many counts and exemption of VAT on many items used by a large section of society.

The demands of the Tamil Nadu Vanigar Sangankalin Peramaippu include no new taxes in the budget for 2014-15, converting the multi-point VAT into single-point tax, scrapping the rule that the traders have to pay 25 per cent of the tax levied in original assessment order when they go for an appeal, removing the Rule 19 (20) of VAT, hiking the ceiling on sales tax exemption from `10 lakh to `50 lakh. exemption of tax on edible oils, bi-cycles, tri-cyles, uniforms used by school students and readymade garments manufactured within the country and for kolamaavu.

The demands made by the Tamil Nadu Small and Tiny Industries Association include removal of the current provision of reversal of credit in the inter-State sales, eligibility for input credit when goods are manufactured in other States and brought back and sale affected in the State, reversal of input tax in case of sale to uregistered dealers in course of inter-State sale, exemption of VAT for purchase of solar equipment as they come under capital goods, withdrawal of VAT amendments - Annexure V, deferred tax benefit scheme for MSMEs and exemption for VAT for fishing nets.

The meeting, attended by over 100 representatives from various trading bodies, was presided over by Finance Minister O Panneerselvam. Commercial Taxes Minister MC Sampath, Finance Secretary K Shanmugam, Commercial Taxes Secretary SK Prabhakar and CT Commissioner K Rajaraman were among those who attended the meeting.