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Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday asked the income tax department not to lose sight of domestic unaccounted money, keeping in view its much higher magnitude.
At a review meeting with senior officers of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), he asked them to make their best efforts to focus on those sectors where it is most prevalent.
“He said the recovery of black money and taxes due thereon will also help the department in achieving its tax collection targets,” the finance ministry stated.
The minister assessed and analysed achievements of Budget targets for revenue collections for 2014-15, and observed that with the rise in economic prospects, the target was expected to be met.
The collection target for direct taxes for 2014-15 has been fixed at Rs 7,36,221 crore. The tax department has made net collections of Rs 2,96,802 crore as on October 20. Gross collections increased by 13.6 per cent to Rs 3,77,652 crore during this period, while refunds were of the tune of Rs 80,850 crore.
“The meeting focused on drawing up strategies to meet the Budget target of 15 per cent growth. The finance minister advised we should focus on domestic black money,” said an official.
The department gave a presentation with details of strategies, which might be adopted to augment revenue collections. It mentioned there will be monitoring of advance tax payments by top taxpayers. There might be follow-up on actionable list of top 200/100 deductors generated by CPC-TDS where shortfall in TDS (tax deducted at source) this financial year is more than 10 per cent as compared to the previous financial year. Besides, there will be follow-up of non-filers.
Jaitley further said certain sectors of economy such as services sector are doing well, while other sectors, including manufacturing, are gradually picking up compared to previous years.
“He expects that performance of economy during the third and fourth quarter of the current financial year would be better than the previous ones,” the ministry statement added.
He asked tax officials to widen the tax base to bring more people under the tax umbrella. He said senior officers of the department has to act and behave in an assessee-friendly manner but at the same time ensure tax payers don’t evade taxes and must pay the taxes due.
