With a target of `6.68 lakh crore in income tax collection in 2013-14, of which `60,000 crore is expected to come from Karnataka and Goa, the Income Tax department in the state is expecting Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) collections to form a major chunk of this figure.
Speaking at a workshop for sub-registrars on introduction of Section 194-IA under the Finance Act 2013, Chief Commissioner of Income Tax (CCIT), Bangalore-1, K Satyanarayana, said, “Last year, we collected Rs 24,323 crore from Karnataka and Goa as TDS. This year, with a target of Rs 60,000 crore, Rs 7,000 crore has already been collected. The purpose of this Section is to widen the tax net.”
Section 194-IA requires TDS to be made on transfer of any immovable property other than agricultural land for sale worth Rs 50 lakh and above. The Act will apply to all immovable property sales from June 1. “I am told that there has been a lull in registration of properties after the Act came into effect, but there is no cause for apprehension,” he added.
In 2011-12, there were around 16 lakh property registrations in the state and the income from tax was around Rs 4,900 crore. “This is the state government’s third largest source of revenue,” Satyanarayana said. Director General of IT Investigations, S Ravi, pointed out various issues that needed to be worked out between the IT department and the Department of Stamps and Revenue. “In the last six years, we have received close to 31 lakh pieces of information from them. We managed to identify 1,11,995 cases and investigated a part of it. Transactions worth around Rs 4,000 crore are involved in this,” Ravi said.
Explaining the importance of sub-registrars in the process of recording a sale, he said that it was imperative to ensure that the PAN and permanent address of the seller were mentioned. “In joint development agreements (JDAs), often, the address of the transferee is that of the property being sold. This makes it difficult for us to track the seller. The JDA registration must also be done in the year of sale and not when construction is completed,” he added.
Adoni Syed Saleem, IAS Inspector General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps, said there was much work to be done in the area of JDA registration.
He also said that steps were being taken to ensure that sale figures quoted in registration documents were the same as reported to the IT department.