Over 4 mn new assessees brought under IT net: CBDT

New taxpayers added as part of two initiatives by dept -- Non-Filers Management System (NMS) and special drive to add 10 mn new assessees this financial year

Over four million new assessees have been brought within the tax net over the last year and their number is increasing every day, the CBDT has said.

Complimenting the Income Tax department for expanding the tax base by getting in the net more and more 'capable-to-pay taxes' people, CBDT Chairman Atulesh Jindal said the government coffers have also got a very "substantial" revenue from these entities.

"We are very, very conscious of the fact that we have to expand our tax base and, as we have always said, we are making good use of information technology tools in this exercise. We have added over 40 lakh new taxpayers over the last year and we have got substantial taxes from them," Jindal told PTI.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes boss said the new taxpayers have been added as part of two major initiatives undertaken by the department over the last year-- the Non-Filers Management System (NMS) and a special drive to add 1 crore new assessees in the current financial year.

The NMS is run with the help of available information technology tools and e-database information with the IT department. Once the taxman finds that an individual has the capability to pay taxes but is either not reporting or under-reporting his income, then a notice is sent to him for compliance.

Jindal said both the campaigns of the department "have been very successful" in achieving their targets.

He said the IT department and the CBDT are working to further enhance the e-services platform for taxpayers like easing the online Income Tax Return filing system and procedure for issuing timely refunds and other services.

"We are undertaking these taxpayer-friendly initiatives under our e-sahyog programme and also as part of the paperless tax assessment system for which we are running pilot projects in five metro cities which will further be initiated in two more large cities as announced by the Finance Minister in his speech," he said.

The pilot projects are being run in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad.

The CBDT chairman said the required amendments in the Income Tax Act have been made recently which give "legal sanctity" to the email-based paperless system of assessment of cases, beginning with instances of scrutiny audit.

"We are preparing to usher in these initiatives on a large scale," Jindal said.