Telangana Commercial Taxes Minister T. Srinivas Yadav has said that the State government was actively considering increasing the value added tax (VAT) on gold from the present one per cent to five as a lot of tax evasion was detected in bullion market. Talking to media persons on Thursday, Mr. Yadav said it was found that the turnover of gold jewellery and diamond merchants was huge, but the same was not reflected in their tax returns. They suppressed income which was a huge revenue loss to the government as it did not get taxes.

The same was the case with corporate hospitals which billed patients in lakhs of rupees, but returned smaller income to avoid taxes. The government will step up vigil on the hospitals, he added. Mr. Yadav also said the government was continuing raids on businessmen with the objective to detect “zero business” (tax evasion) and the efforts yielded good results as the additional revenue in tax collection realised this year was to an extent of Rs. 300 crore.