Eye on non-filers: Income Tax dept to launch e-campaign on voluntary compliance

The 11-day campaign ending on July 31, 2020, focuses on the assessees/taxpayers who are either non-filers or have discrepancies/deficiency in their returns for the Fiscal year 2018-19.

The Income Tax Department will start an e-campaign from July 20 on voluntary compliance for the convenience of taxpayers. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said that data analysis has identified certain taxpayers with high value transactions who have not filed returns for AY2019-20 (relevant to FY2018-19).

In addition to non-filers, another set of return filers has also been identified wherein high-value transactions do not appear to be in line with their Income Tax Returns. The CBDT in a statement said that the last date for filing as well as revising the Income Tax Return for Assessment Year 2019-20 (relevant to FY 2018-19) is July 31, 2020.

The 11-day campaign ending on July 31, 2020, focuses on the assessees/taxpayers who are either non-filers or have discrepancies/deficiency in their returns for the Fiscal year 2018-19. The CBDT in a statement said the objective of the e-campaign is to facilitate taxpayers to online validate their tax/financial transaction information available with the I-T department and promote voluntary compliance, especially for the assessees for the FY2018-19 so that they do not need to get into notice and scrutiny process.

“Under this e-campaign the Income Tax Department will send email/SMS to identified taxpayers to verify their financial transactions related information received by the I-T department from various sources such as Statement of Financial Transactions (SFT), Tax Deduction at Source (TDS), Tax Collection at Source TCS), Foreign Remittances (Form 15CC) etc,” it said.

The Department, also, has collected information related to GST, exports, imports and transactions in securities, derivatives, commodities, mutual funds, etc. The CBDT said that under the e-campaign the taxpayers will be able to access details of their high value transaction related information on the designated portal.