Income Tax Department likely to achieve 19% growth in tax collection from Bihar and Jharkhand

JAMSHEDPUR: The Income Tax Department of Bihar & Jharkhand region is likely to achieve a growth of 19 per cent in tax collection during the current fiscal as it has already successfully brought 3.25 lakh new assessees under its net.

Out of the set target of 13,200 crore of tax collection for the fiscal 2017-18, the department has already achieved a collection of Rs 7,075 crore and efforts are on to meet the target in next two-and-half months, said Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax (Bihar and Jharkhand region), K C Ghumaria.

Addressing a press conference here, Ghumaria, who was accompanied by Chief Commissioner of Income Tax (Jharkhand region) V Mahalingam, said the department has included 3.25 lakh new assesses out of the set target of 5.2 lakh in the financial year.

The department is making efforts to convince people to pay tax honestly, he said while expressing confidence that the remaining new taxpayers would be brought under the tax net in the next two-and-half months time.

Currently, Bihar and Jharkhand have only 15 lakh taxpayers.

Ghumaria, who was in the steel city to take part in a seminar on TDS awareness, said the objective of such seminars was to make people aware about their responsibility to pay tax honestly.

He said that the strict income tax provisions, coupled with Aadhaar linkage, have made it impossible for anyone to conceal their income.

He added that stringent action would be initiated against the defaulters.

Ghumaria also said that the I-T Department has already filed 84 prosecution against defaulters this year and as many prosecution were in the process of filing compared to only 10 prosecutions filed last year.

Besides, the department has apprised the Centre about 46 government departments and corporations, who were allegedly regular defaulters and had not filed I-T returns for the past three years.

Asked about the recovery of black money post-demonetisation, Ghumaria said it was yet to be evaluate the notices served against persons who deposited money in excess.

"We have already served notices to 62 per cent of 10,000 cases of depositing money in excess of Rs 10 lakh in the two states and also detected irregularities in some coal and iron ore mines in Ranchi region.

"We have detected mines (captive) allocated for self-consumption were being traded or misused," he said adding that necessary action was being initiated.

Referring to the Tax Deducted at Source and Tax Collected at Sources, he said we have already achieved over 65 per cent, which was much more than the regular and advance tax collection in the fiscal.