To facilitate voluntary compliance and give business owners a fair opportunity to resolve historical disputes, the Finance Minister announced that the Punjab Government has extended the One Time Settlement (OTS) Scheme up to July 31, 2026. He said that this scheme provides a transparent and highly favorable mechanism for taxpayers with pending VAT liabilities to settle their outstanding dues quickly, thereby completely avoiding litigation, ongoing disputes, and coercive state action.
Issuing a definitive warning to remaining evaders, the Excise and Taxation Minister Harpal Singh Cheema declared that the era of ignoring official tax demands and assuming that government dues will remain unrecovered has officially come to an end. He revealed that the Excise and Taxation Department has already identified numerous properties belonging to habitual, chronic defaulters, and nearly 20 additional property auctions have already been scheduled across various districts in the coming weeks and months. He said, "The Excise and Taxation Department remains unyielding in its commitment to protecting public revenue, ensuring that thousands of honest, law-abiding taxpayers across Punjab are not placed at a financial or competitive disadvantage by a small group of wilful defaulters who actively avoid their legal duties."
The Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema warned that taxpayers who continue to disregard their legal obligations will face immediate and severe consequences, as the department actively pursues all available legal remedies, including the attachment of bank accounts, seizure of assets, and the public auction of both movable and immovable properties to secure every single rupee owed to the State of Punjab.