NEW DELHI: Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday urged all income-tax assessees to file their returns by October 31 or be prepared to face the consequences. The Income-Tax Department had sufficient data on all nature of transactions to help track down tax evaders, he warned.

Briefing newspersons here, Mr. Chidambaram said: "All arrangements are in place and all help is being provided to those who want to file their returns by October 31. The best way to live life is to hold your heads high. Please pay your returns and have a happy Diwali."

Making it clear that he meant business, Mr. Chidambaram said that the I-T Department had "abundant data" relating to 1,72,511 parties or individual entities conducting transactions in cash deposits of Rs. 10 lakhs or more during the fiscal year. It also had information pertaining to 3,23,563 credit card holders with expenditure of Rs. 2 lakhs or more in a year as well as data on 4,96,600 parties who had invested Rs. 2 lakhs or more in mutual funds and transactions in immoveable properties.

"The Department has more information than people think it has. It has a huge volume of information relating to transactions in the economy," Mr. Chidambaram said. He was merely divulging some parameters of the information the I-T Department had, he added. Instructions had been issued to various I-T Commissioners to contact credit card companies, chairmen and managing directors of banks, mutual fund executives and registrars of parties to ask the entities concerned to file their annual information return (AIR) if they had not already done so.

Pointing out that there were a large number of assessees who either evaded or declared lower incomes, the Minister said it was common knowledge that the number of taxpayers with an annual income of Rs. 10 lakhs or more was "much, much more" than the 75,000-85,000 people who declared their income at that level. In view of the resource crunch and the massive expenditure envisaged in social sector development, the number of such high value assessees should be double or even three of four times the figure now, he said.

Over the last few years, the number of I-T assessees, Mr. Chidambaram said, had remained almost stagnant. In 2003-04 their number was 2,34,40,89 and in 2004-05 2,46,11,49.

As part of the awareness campaign, the I-T Department would send SMS messages in the last week of October to mobile phone users whose billing exceeded Rs. 1,000 a month. The messages would also include details of the I-T Department website and the phone number of the Aayakar Sampark Kendra. "It will wish the assessees Happy Diwali and request them to file their returns," Mr Chidambaram said.

The intensive publicity campaign is primarily aimed at `stop-filers' and `non-filers', essentially those who with taxable income but who neither pay taxes nor filing returns.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail