I-T dept collects over Rs 3,500 crore from non-filers

The Income Tax department has issued over 20 lakh ‘intimations’ and collected Rs 3,569 crore (Rs 35.69 billion) in the current financial year from those taxpayers who had either not filed their tax returns or did so incorrectly.

Under its 'non-filers tracking management system', an intelligence based project which was launched two years back, the I-T department tracked high-value transactions being made by entities and individuals across the country who were either not reported to the taxman correctly or purposefully kept hidden from coming under the tax scanner.

"We had issued 20 lakh (2 million) intimation letters to taxpayers till February this year and we got a total of 8,57,218 returns filed after this exercise.

“The department collected an advance tax of Rs 1536.43 crore (Rs 15.36 billion) and self-assessment tax of Rs 2,031.76 crore (Rs 20.31 billion) as a result of this drive," Income Tax department Commissioner (Media and Planning) Rekha Shukla told a group of visiting journalists in Bengaluru.

Shukla said the department had obtained data about these taxpayers through their tracking of big ticket transactions like property purchase, investments in fixed deposits, purchase of jewellery and gold and credit and debit card-based transactions.

It also tracked the Annual Information Returns and data mined by the intelligence wing of the tax department to obtain data on people who were evading filing of their returns.

"These taxpayers are either those who have filed their I-T returns but were defective or those who had not reflected these transactions for the analysis of the department," I-T Commissioner (Central Processing Centre) R K Mishra said.

The tax department, the two officers said, also said that a full-fledged and independent unit for tracking 'non filers' is set to be made operational by early next year which will be called the Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence directorate.

The officials said these new projects are aimed to promote 'non-intrusive' mechanisms to check tax evasion and check instances of black money within the country in specific and those having overseas ramifications, in general.

The I-T department expects that some more revenue would be garnered by the taxman from under this category before the end of the current financial year on March 31.

They said the department is increasingly gearing to issue and give more and more Permanent Account Number cards in the country.

"As of now, the total PAN cards issued stand at 21.81 crore (Rs 218.1 million)," they said.

The department will also open 252 new Aaykar Sampark Kendras across the country for facilitating taxpayer services, they added.