Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has asked income tax officials to unearth black money within the country, which he said was ‘quite large’. He, however, did not give any numbers.

Addressing the annual conference of top honchos of Income Tax Department here on Monday, the Minister said, “The Government is making all efforts to bring back black money stashed abroad but the officers have to make equally serious effort to unearth black money within the country.”

Talking about the tax target, Jaitley expressed confidence that the revenue targets fixed for the current fiscal, would not only be achieved, but would also be surpassed. The Finance Ministry has fixed a target of ₹13.61 lakh crore for tax revenue. This includes ₹7.36 lakh crore under for direct taxes (Personal Income Tax, Corporate Tax, Transaction Taxes on Securities & Commodities, and Wealth Tax) and ₹6.25 lakh crore for indirect taxes (Custom Duty, Central Excise Tax and Service Tax).

Achieving direct tax target would require a growth of 20 per cent, while in the case of indirect tax it would be 15 per cent. It may be noted that, tax collection fell short of target by a whopping ₹77,000 crore during 2012-13. The Government collected ₹11.58 lakh crore against the Budget estimate of ₹12.35 lakh crore. However, the Government is hoping that recovery in economy will bring buoyancy in tax collection.

The Minister said that the job of the officers of the Income Tax Department is very difficult in the sense that on the one hand they have to achieve the tax collection targets and on the other hand to play the role of tax facilitator for the assessees. He said that officers are duty bound to work in a non-adversarial, non-intrusive, transparent and fair manner, yet they have to deal firmly with those trying to evade taxes due from them to the Department.

Earlier, addressing the officers, Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das said the focus and efforts of the officers of the department should be to reduce tax arrears which are to the tune of ₹4 lakh crore and higher tax recovery. He also asked them to reduce tax litigation and avoid frivolous and avoidable litigation.

Speaking on the occasion, the Chairman of Central Board of Direct Taxes, RK Tiwari, listed various initiatives to augment tax revenue. These include monitoring of advance tax payments by top tax papers, TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) payments by top deductions, monitoring tax payments by entities covered under MAT/AMT (Minimum Alternative Tax/Alternate Minimum Tax) provisions, appropriate action to tackle default/deferment of payments of TDS/self assessment tax, harnessing impact of revenue augmenting legislation in recent years, among others.

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