A day after the Government shared the names of over 600 foreign bank account holders with the Supreme Court in the black money case, the Finance Minister asked the Income Tax Department to not lose sight of domestic black money.

An official statement said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley asked senior officers of the Income Tax Department to make their best efforts to chase those sectors where domestic black money is most prevalent. He said the recovery of black money and taxes due thereon will help the Department in achieving its tax collection targets.

Jaitley was addressing top officials of the Income Tax Department in order to assess and analyse the achievements of the Budget Targets for Revenue Collections for Financial Year 2014-15. The Government aims to collect ₹7.36 lakh crore which requires a growth rate of 15 per cent over actual collections made in 2013-14.

According to the latest figures available, gross collection of direct taxes (personal income tax, corporate tax, securities transaction tax and wealth tax) was over ₹3.77 lakh crore. This shows a growth of 13.6 per cent over same period of previous fiscal. However, after refund payment of ₹80,850 crore during April-October, net collection was over ₹2.96 lakh crore.

Widen tax base The Minister hoped that the target can be achieved with rise in economic prospects. He further said that certain sectors of economy such as services are doing well while other sectors including manufacturing sector are gradually picking up compared to previous years. He expects that performance of economy during the second half (October-March) of the current fiscal would be better than previous ones.

He asked the tax officials to widen the tax base in order to bring more individuals within the tax domain. He said senior officers of the department should act and behave in an assessee-friendly manner but at the same time ensure that tax payers don’t evade tax.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes, the highest policy making body in the income-tax system, made a presentation highlighting strategies for augmenting revenue collection. This includes monitoring of advance tax payments by top tax payers. There may be follow-up on actionable list of top 200 or 100 deductors generated by Central Processing Centre for Tax Deducted at Sources (CPC-TDS) in the current fiscal is more than 10 per cent as compared to previous fiscal.

Besides, there will be follow-up of Non-filers Monitoring System (NMS) cases. There may be calling of returns in those cases where in last three years income returned exceeded ₹10 lakhs or SAT (self assessment tax) paid exceeded ₹1 lakh but return not filed for the current fiscal. Appropriate action may be taken to deter default or deferment of payment of TDS/self assessment tax, it said.

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