AMN
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said Income Tax Department has taken various initiatives in the last two to three years to bring about efficiency, transparency and fairness in tax administration.
Addressing the second meeting of the consultative committee of his Ministry in New Delhi, Finance Minister said, government is committed to widen the tax base by encouraging and incentivising the new tax payers.
He said, number of tax payers has been increased significantly from 4.72 crore in financial year 2012-13 to 6.26 crore during the current financial Year. Mr Jaitley said rate of tax for individuals with income of 2.5 lakhs to five lakhs rupees was reduced from 10 per cent to 5 per cent which is one of the lowest in the world. He also said, the concept of – no scrutiny was introduced for the first time for Non-Business Tax payers having income up to 5 lakhs rupees so that more and more people could join the tax net and file their IT returns. The Minister said, corporate tax was reduced to 25 per cent for companies with turn-over up to 50 crore rupees, covering almost 96 per cent of the companies.
Highlighting the initiatives in the field of E-Governance, the Finance Minister said, 97 per cent of the income tax returns were filed electronically this year, out of which 92 per cent were processed within 60 days. On government drive against black money, Mr Jaitley said, undisclosed income of five thousand 400 crore rupees was detected and about 400 cases have been referred to ED and CBI. He said, after the intense follow-up of demonetization data, about 1100 searches were made resulting in seizure of 610 crore rupees.