The Revenue Department on Friday reaffirmed its commitment to achieve direct tax collection target of ₹13.5-lakh crore for the current fiscal. This is despite foregoing ₹1.45-lakh crore corporate tax and the widely expected overall shortfall of over ₹2-lakh crore this fiscal due to the current economic slowdown.

A meeting today, chaired by Revenue Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey and attended all Principal Chief Commissioners and Chief Commissioners of income tax beside all the members of Central Board of Direct Taxes, was called to strategise and achieve direct tax collection target as proposed in the Budget.

According to sources, there were deliberations on sharing information between GST and Income-Tax departments about all such taxpayers who have taken high input tax credit (ITC) but which does not match with their personal income tax return submitted to I-T department.

Also, the GST information would be made available to I-T departments to identify the cases of suppression of personal income or tax evasion by showing lower GST turnover or taking refund from GST fraudulently. The officials were told to get into a campaign mode to recover past arrears.

Data analytics

Post discussions, directions were given to the taxmen to put forward special efforts to identify and book tax evaders through data analytics and information sharing and also, share the findings with GST officials to initiate stern actions against wilful tax evaders or those using fake invoices or inflated or fake e-way Bills.

However, officials were asked to ensure that the genuine taxpayers are not troubled but none of the tax evaders should go scot free. Officials were also told to communicate with taxpayers that they must genuinely file their taxes before the I-T Department notice reaches them.

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