Be sure to collect your bill next time you buy anything as it may win you Rs. 10 lakh.
To encourage the practice of billing, the state excise and taxation department is offering prizes to customers selected through a lucky draw. The procedure is simple: the customer writes his name, address and contact number on the bill of purchase; this bill is then deposited at the nearest excise and taxation office to be eligible for the lottery.

The lucky draw of submitted bills will be held at the department's headquarters in Patiala sometime after December 31. The first prize winner gets Rs. 10 lakh; other attractive prizes include a car and household items.

State excise and taxation commissioner A Venu Prasad made this announcement here on Friday after chairing a meeting of the officers of his department.

"The motive for this lottery system is to inculcate the habit of demanding or taking bills on every purchase," Prasad said. "This will help the department plug tax and value added tax (VAT) leaks and thus increase revenue."

Explaining the steps taken to plug leaks and streamline the collection system, Prasad said traders and shopkeepers could deposit their VAT collections online. "Because of this step, the amount from VAT and other collections has risen from Rs. 5,000 crore to Rs. 15,000 crore in the last few years."
In order to make the department efficient and root out corruption, 10 officials had been dismissed, said Prasad.

Earlier, during a meeting with officers, Prasad asked them to keep tabs on the sale and purchase of paddy and basmati by traders or private buyers. "The state's revenue often gets lost due to laxity of officials of the department assigned the task of looking after sale and purchase of agricultural produce," he added.

Prasad said due to better coordination with the Railways, the department had imposed fines on several traders during checking in railway stations in the state for evading payment of taxes. He directed the officials to check all sale and purchase records of traders by December 31.