Nearly 4.4 million “targeted” emails have been sent by the government to the people who have gaps in the transactions on their accounts and the income they reported in last year’s tax filing cycle, as per the senior official, a forewarning has been issued by the tax department to assist the people for preventing to sent a tax notice.
Over the tax returns filed throughout the AY 2023-24 the emails were being sent which are related to the income of the people in FY 2022-23.
“These emails are targeted at large discrepancies and not small ones,” Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) chairman Nitin Gupta stated.
The email mentioned that the income of the assessee mentioned in his or her return is not proportional to the income return furnished by the income tax department. Therefore the taxpayer is required to file an amended return, Nitin Gupta added. CBDT, an arm of the Union finance ministry, is obligated to administer direct taxes, including income tax.
July 31 is the first due date to file the return and the individual has the time for filing the amended returns till 31st December. Those who forget to file their original returns by 31st July can do that by 31st December via filing an amount of Rs 5000 as a penalty.
A tax notice is more strict and might render scrutiny and penalties computed as a proportion of the pending due, experts mentioned.
Gupta mentioned that the email that cautions the regime is in process with the government’s simplicity of functioning the business and execution of ease of living. He added that the GST council is more lenient on inadvertent lapses that the taxpayer does and seeks them for the unintended omissions of any income during reporting to the council.
As per the Chairman, there are also cases of non-compliance because of the lack of awareness, however, there are additional sorts of cases that are deliberate and counted in the class of tax evasion.
In cases where people do not declare their income intentionally, there are “enforcement actions we do take, which are providing us good results”, Nitin Gupta stated.
The e-mails, he elaborated were for a 3rd category.
“There is one more category, which is slightly different from these two, is that the taxpayer is filing a return, but income therein is not commensurate to the financial transactions the taxpayer has undertaken. For example, purchase of a property, financial transactions of securities or mutual funds. For such cases, we are also applying two methodologies, one is the e-verification scheme. Where, for the old cases, we put the differential… and request him to give explanation/response to that,” he articulated stating that extreme cases can be picked up for scrutiny.
“We sent out targeted e-mails for the assessment year 2023-24, before the last date for filing the revised returns, so that the tax payers could file revised returns.”
Gupta stated mitigation of compliance and the technology use leads to the taxation system being transparent and efficient and has checked evasions particularly, those that supported the government mop up high direct tax revenue.
Strong tax collections reminded the finance minister to raise CBDT’s target from ₹18,23,250 crore ( ₹9,22,675 crore in corporate income tax or CIT, and ₹9,00,575 crore personal income tax or PIT) in 2023-24 BE (budget estimate) to ₹19,45,000 crore in 2023-24 RE ( ₹9,22,675 crore CIT and ₹10,22,325 crore PIT).
“We will try to achieve the RE (revised estimate) target as we still have two more months. We don’t know what will be the inflow of advance tax or TDS [tax deducted at source], but we will make an endeavour to achieve this it is achievable,” Gupta said.
He is also sure for the subsequent financial year (FY25), where the BE target for CIT is ₹10,42,830 crore and PIT is ₹11,56,000 crore. The total ₹21,98,830 crore in BE of FY25 is 13% that is exceeding RE 2023-24 and over 20.5% more as compared to BE of FY24.
“It is realistic and achievable,” Gupta said while pointing at robust Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth. Despite global headwinds such as conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and the Red Sea trade disruption, India’s first advance estimates of growth released on January 5 projected a higher-than-expected GDP growth of 7.3% in FY24. A finance ministry report released two days before the interim budget said India will remain the fastest-growing major economy in 2024-25 with real GDP growth likely to be closer to 7%.
Gupta expressed “It is realistic and achievable,” at the time of indicating the vigorous GDP growth. Despite global headwinds like conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and the Red Sea trade disruption, India’s first advance estimations of growth introduced on January 5 seem a more-than-expected GDP growth of 7.3% in FY24. report of the finance ministry released two days before the interim budget mentioned India shall remain the fastest-growing economy in 2024-25 with the real GDP rise appearing to be near 7%.
