Another batch of 30,000 tax notices on its way

After sending letters to 70,000 high-value spenders who did not file their income tax returns, the tax department is all set to send another 30,000 notices this week.

This may be the final batch of such letters in the current assessment year ending March 31.

“Letters will be sent to 30,000 permanent account number (PAN) holders who carried out high-value financial transactions last year, but did not file income tax returns,” said a finance ministry official.

The official added though this would be the last batch of letters this year, more PAN card holders would receive such notices from the income tax department next year.

Though the government has identified 1.2 million tax assessees who have a PAN card but did not file their income-tax return, the letters have been sent to a small percentage of such non-filers as the tax department has limited resources to execute the task in a short time.

Earlier this month, letters were dispatched to 35,000 people, followed by another set of 35,000 notices.

With more letters going this week, the total number of notices will go up to Rs 1 lakh crore (Rs 1 trillion) this year.

The letters are primarily being sent to non-salaried taxpayers who bought a land, property, gold, mutual funds, shares, or made huge purchases on

credit card, but did not file their return.

The letters contain the summary of information of financial transactions, along with customised response sheets.

A nodal cell has been set up to capture the response.

There will be an online monitoring system to ensure follow-up action and track return filing and tax payment of the target segment.

The tax department got information about these transactions from sources like the Annual information Return (AIR), furnished by entities such as banks and financial institutions.

Sale of purchase of property over Rs 30 lakh (Rs 3 million), credit card payment of over Rs 200,000, cash deposits aggregating to Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million) and payment of Rs 500,000 or more are some of the transactions currently included under AIR.

The finance ministry had warned the taxpayers last month itself that those who did not file their returns might have to face the tax department.

It said the Directorate of Systems had undertaken a business intelligence project to identify PAN holders who have not filed returns and about whom specific information is available in 148 information codes.

“This data analysis has identified target segment of 12,19,832 non-filers linked to more than 4.7 crore (47 million) information records.

"Rule based algorithms have been used to identify high priority cases for follow-up and monitoring,” the ministry had said in a statement.