Revenue Department holds high-level meeting to Rs 13.5 lakh cr direct tax collection target

In furtherance of its concerted efforts to augment tax collection in the coming four months, the Department of Revenue on Friday conducted here a high-level meeting of senior Income Tax officials to strategise and achieve direct tax collection target of Rs 13.5 lakh crore despite recently announced corporate tax relief of Rs 1.45 lakh crore by the government.

In the meeting, all Income Tax Principal Chief Commissioners and Chief Commissioners were present.

This crucial meeting was chaired by Revenue Secretary Dr Ajay Bhushan Pandey and was also attended by the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) officials including members of both the boards.

Sources in the Finance Ministry said that in today's meeting deliberations were made to share information between the GST and the Income Tax departments about all such taxpayers, who have taken a high input tax credit (ITC) but that does not match with their personal income tax return submitted to I-T Department.

Also, the GST information would be made available to the Income Tax Department to identify the cases of suppression of personal income or tax evasion by showing lower GST turnover or taking a refund from the GST fraudulently. The officials were told to get into a campaign mode to recover the past arrears.

Post-discussions, directions were given to the taxmen to put forward special efforts to identify and book the tax evaders through data analytics.

They were asked to share the findings with the GST officials to initiate stern actions against wilful tax evaders or those using fake invoices or inflated or fake e-way Bills. However, officials were told to ensure that the genuine taxpayers shall not be troubled but none of the tax evaders should go scot-free.

The officials were directed to communicate with taxpayers that they must genuinely file their taxes before the notice of the tax department reaches them, sources said.

It may be noted that the Central government is taking all possible careful measures to curb tax evasion and leakages in its anti-evasion drive.

Recently in its 38th meeting, the GST Council lowered the limit of ITC outgo from 20 per cent to 10 per cent before invoices are loaded.

In order to help genuine taxpayers who have mistakenly missed out some information in their tax return, the tax authorities have provided them with an opportunity to submit their revised returns as well.

It may be recalled that earlier this week, the Finance Ministry put its GST tax collection targets to Rs 4.45 lakh crore for the remaining period of this financial year.

"Today's meeting was yet another effort to strategies and exhort the tax machinery to put up special efforts to stop leakages and curb tax evasion to maximise tax collection without troubling the genuine taxpayers," added sources.