Black money: More officials to get involved in crackdown

An increased number of Indian Revenue Service (IRS) personnel will be deployed to probe and gather intelligence on cases involving black money, with the government taking steps to free these officials from some of their normal tax collection duties.

This has been made possible by a new notification issued by the finance ministry that increases the upper limit of tax cases handled by Income Income Tax Officers (ITOs) — who are the nodal officers for tax collection in the I-T department — to Rs 30 lakh from Rs 10 lakh earlier.

“The step has been taken keeping in mind the new challenges of the department in the fields of investigation and curbing black money. The income limits for ITOs have been revised after a decade, since they were first introduced in 2001,” a senior finance ministry official said.

High-value tax cases, worth over Rs 10 lakh, were earlier outside the ITOs’ purview and were handled by IRS officers of the rank of assistant commissioner and deputy commissioner.

The upward revision in the limits will enable IRS personnel to focus their efforts on specialised areas like international taxation, transfer pricing, investigation, intelligence and criminal prosecution.

“This new step will enable the department to free up its IRS cadre for tax administration and work in more specialised areas of international tax, transfer pricing, investigation, intelligence and criminal prosecutions,” the official said.

According to new rules, which will come into force from the next financial year that commences on April 1, 2011, the ITO in “small cities and mofussil areas” will now handle non-corporate returns of up to Rs 15 lakh and corporate returns of up to Rs 20 lakh.

In addition, their counterparts in metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Hyderabad, among others, are empowered to handle non-corporate income of up to Rs 20 lakh and corporate income of up to Rs 30 lakh. The decision was also taken in view of a large number of complaints to the I-T department and the finance ministry that the earlier limits of the ITO were increasing taxpayers’ burden.

“References have been received by the board from a large number of taxpayers, especially from mofussil areas, that the existing monetary limit for assigning cases to ITOs and deputy commissioners/assistant commissioners is causing hardship to taxpayers, as it results in transfer of their cases to a DC/AC who is based in a different station. This increases the cost of compliance,” a Central Board of Direct Taxes notification said.