Thaindian News

Chandigarh, May 17 (IANS) Enthused by a good tax collection in 2010-11 fiscal, India’s Central Board of Direct Taxes has fixed its collection target for 2011-12 at Rs.530,000 crore, its chairman said Tuesday.

“In 2010-11, we have achieved the budget target of Rs.446,000 crore. We had the original budget target of Rs.430,000 crore but we revised it to Rs.446,000 crore. We have set the budget target of Rs.530,000 crore for this fiscal,” said CBDT chairman Sudhir Chandra, while addressing a press conference here.

Chandra also cited the large number of refunds his department made during last fiscal.

“In 2010-11, we have made around 85 lakh refunds, amounting to nearly Rs.74,000 crore. I consider it one of the biggest achievement of our department and it substantiates the fact that Income Tax department not only takes people’s money but also returns it,” said Chandra.

He added, “Our aim is to contribute our best to the growth of the country. We take every penny that is legal as tax. Besides, we do not believe in taking any penny more or any penny less.”

The CBDT has also detected black money worth Rs.30,000 crore in the last 22 months, he said.

“During the last 22 months, in income tax searches, we have detected black money worth Rs.18,000 crore. When we talk about surveys, then we have detected black money worth Rs.12,000 crore. So roughly in the last two years, black money worth Rs.30,000 crore has been unearthed,” said Chandra.

“We have detected this black money all across the country from various sectors and industries like mining, real-estate and manufacturing.”

Chandra had come to Chandigarh to inaugurate a new office of the department.

He said that last year, over three crore Indian people filed their returns, and of these 97 lakh filed it electronically.

“Here nobody can hide anything and refund is fast if returns are filed electronically. Another interesting thing is that almost 70 per cent of these 97 lakh were in the voluntary category,” he said.

Talking about the complaints that they receive, Chandra said, “A large chunk of information that we receive is not true and it is based on gossip. Some neighbour is complaining out of jealousy or to settle a personal score, or a husband or wife who has some divorce case pending in the court, complains.”

“We cannot take action on the basis of all these complaints. Therefore, in most of the cases, we do it on the basis of profiles of tax-payers that we made on the basis of information downloaded from internet,” said Chandra.