New Delhi, Feb 10: Union government’s tax kitty increased by Rs 26,500 Crore after it launched a drive to nab the persons who were doing high-value transactions but deliberately did not file their tax returns. The Income tax department, after tracking non-filers for years, forced offenders to file 1.7 crore extra returns.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley, in his written reply to Rajya Sabha, said that I-T department tracked non-filers through in-house information and matched it with data on high-value transactions along with TDS and tax collected at source (TCS).
“The mechanism for collection and verification of financial information has been broadened to include data in respect of various types of high-value transactions from banks and financial institutions and high-value expenditure from commercial establishments in the form of Statement of Financial Transaction (SFT),” Jaitley said.
He added that department’s decision to make PAN card mandatory for any transaction above Rs 2 Lakh proved crucial and the officials were mining data to nab more non-filers.
He added that after tracking non-filers, the government used rule-based algorithms to classify cases into various categories and monitoring them. It not only sent text messages and notices to offenders but also formed compliance management cell to track responses.