Regional offices of income tax dept collected Rs 1 L cr, but staff says it doesn't have money to pay for essentials

While the Income Tax Department collected about Rs 10 lakh crore for FY18 in tax revenues for the first time in history, it seems like regional offices are struggling to meet their day-to-day expenses due to shortage of funds.

Income Revenue Services (IRS) Associations of Karnataka and Goa held a meeting on April 3 to resolve the problem of funds shortage, sources told Moneycontrol. The two states have not been able to their essential services providers like electricity boards, postal authorities, etc.

The association said that the non-payment of dues hampered their efficiency in crucial months of December to March, and employees at services firms have also not been given salaries on time. “The non-payment is tarnishing the image of tax authority,” Moneycontrol has learnt.

Income tax departments in Karnataka and Goa region collected Rs 1 lakh crore in tax in the last fiscal.

The situation in Goa region is even worse. In Mysore region, state electricity and contingent employee salaries which amount to barely Rs 50 lakh were not paid.

IRS Association also raised concerns over shortage of manpower in the department.

A source close to development told Moneycontrol "On one hand, work has increased immensely in last 2 to 3 years, on the other there is shortage of officers – at inspector cadre, shortage is about 60 percent and at senior tax assistant cadre shortage is around 80 percent."

Indian Revenue Services officials said they are not happy with the way tax collection process is going on. Sources told Moneycontrol that entities that are under scanner were pushed to pay funds only to collect as much revenue as possible before March 31 to meet targets.

A senior official told Moneycontrol "Central Board of Direct Taxes had set the target for tax collection, but they should have done a study before setting the targets. For target completion, there is so much pressure on tax officials to collect funds before the end of the year. This leads to cases like Sai Shirdi."

Last year, the income tax department had made a tax demand of about Rs 120 crores from the the Sai Baba Sansthan Trust. While the trust had filed an appeal to stay the demand, it was asked to pay Rs 20 crore before March 31.