Amid the noise and political blame game surrounding money deposited in offshore illegal bank accounts, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday asked central tax officials to not lose sight of black money stashed within India.
Mr. Jaitley was speaking at a review meeting of Principal Chief Commissioners, Principal Directors-General, Chief Commissioners and Directors-General of Income Tax, called to assess revenue collection targets for 2014-15.
‘Actionable list’ With the Finance Minister’s diktat the Income Tax Department is likely to follow up on an ‘actionable list’ of those top deductors of TDS (Tax Deduction at Source) where the deductions reported this financial year are more than 10 per cent lower than last year’s.
Cases where returns in the previous three years showed incomes exceeding Rs. 10 lakh but for the current year no return has been filed could also be scrutinised.
Mr. Jaitley asked senior Income Tax officials to chase sectors in the domestic economy where black money was most prevalent.
During the meeting, A.K. Jain, Member (Revenue), Central Board of Direct Taxes outlined strategies to augment revenue collections.
Minister for State for Finance Nirmala Sitharaman said increasing revenue collections was “absolutely critical for the government to run its public welfare programmes.”
