Salaried taxpayers with income below Rs. 5 lakh a year and without any other source of income will be exempted from filing tax returns, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Tuesday.
The new rule would apply for the 2011-12 assessment year for the income earned in 2010-11, and a notification would be issued soon, he said, addressing the 27th annual conference of the Chief Commissioners and the Directors-General of Income Tax here.
Mr. Mukherjee asked the Central Board of Direct Taxes to be vigilant in cases of suspected money-laundering, as anti-national elements were funding terror activities and other crimes through illegal transfers.
To check massive transfer of black money and similar funds, the government was setting up a directorate of criminal investigation in the Income Tax Department, he said. The new body would track the criminal activities before, during and after the crime was committed.
To provide salaried taxpayers with better services, the Income Tax Department introduced SAHAJ, a simple and user friendly form, this year. It also came out with SUGAM for small taxpayers who avail themselves of the presumptive tax scheme.
Mr. Mukherjee said the ongoing programme for computerisation of the Income Tax Department should be effectively utilised to optimise the collection potential. Tax deduction at source was a major component of collection and was based on the healthy principle of ‘pay as you earn.' The Centralised Processing Centre for TDS at Ghaziabad was likely to become functional this year.
The Central Processing Centre in Bangalore, which has become fully functional, had processed more than 85 lakh e-returns during 2010-11, and it would perform better still this year. Three more Central Processing Centres were planned at Manesar, Pune and Kolkata.
