VISAKHAPATNAM: The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CDBT) is taking steps to widen the tax base and bring more citizens under the ambit of tax, according to its chairman KV Chowdary.
During his visit to the city Saturday for the first time after assuming charge as CDBT chairman, Chowdary said that as against the population of 125 crore in the country, only 3.5 crore were paying taxes. The latest initiatives by CBDT were likely to reduce the tax burden on the taxpayers and also earn additional revenue for the Union government.
Chowdary said that the Union Budget had set a target of `7.36 lakh crore in terms of tax collections for the current fiscal year. “We have to collect about 15 per cent more than the last year. The gross collection till date is `2.02 lakh crore, out of which `52,614 crore were refunded and the net collection till date is `1.5 lakh crore, which is about 10 per cent increase when compared to the corresponding period last year,” he added.
The CBDT chairman stressed voluntary compliance by the public to reach the targets. He said, “The department believes in non-adversarial and non-intrusive measures to collect taxes. Only in exceptional cases based on specific information, action is initiated.” In the year 2013-14, the department conducted search and seizure operations in 569 cases, resulting in seizure of `808 crore unaccounted for income. This was apart from `10,792 crore of voluntarily admitted unaccounted for income.
Chowdary said the department had conducted surveys in 5,327 cases and an amount of `90,000 crore undisclosed income was detected. Through the Non-filer Management System, the officials had identified 11 lakh non-filers in the last year and 22 lakh non-filers this year to whom notices were issued calling for returns. To find tax-evaders, a separate mechanism was devised for getting information from banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, registrar offices, motor vehicle companies and other institutions.
Replying to a query, Chowdary said that the Union Home Ministry and the state government would be framing the proposals over tax effect on bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh state and tax sharing post-bifurcation. In all, there were 270 Aayakar Seva Kendras (ASK) across the country to offer services to taxpayers in the single window system. Seventy more ASK centres were coming up this year, he added.