Go all out to recover tax arrears, CBDT chief writes to regional heads

Worried over "unsatisfactory" performance in collection of arrear and current tax demands, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has pulled up the Income Tax department, asking it to take urgent steps to achieve the set targets without fail. CBDT Chairman Sushil Chandra has shot of a letter to all his regional chiefs asking them to make "concerted" efforts to get the job done.

"On review of the position of collection out of arrear and current demand as on February 28, 2017, it is noted that the performance of the department as a whole and of almost all Principal Chief Commissioners (regional heads) individually is much below the targets given in the Central Action Plan 2016-17," Chandra wrote in his communication.

The letter said the arrear demand, as against the action plan target of collecting Rs 53,983 crore, only Rs 29,811 crore has been collected till February end, and that works out to be only "55.2 per cent of the target." "This is all-India position and the achievement of some of the regions is even worse than the national average, which itself is very low," Chandra lamented as he said the current situation of these recoveries was "unsatisfactory".

Talking about the current demand collection, the CBDT boss said the new current demand (after reducing pre-paid taxes) of Rs 3,60,707 crore has been raised till February. "As per the action plan target, 20 per cent of the demand raised, which is Rs 72,141 crore, should be collected during the current financial year.

"However, till February 2017, only Rs 11,846 crore has been collected from current demand, which works out to be a miserably low ratio of 3.3 per cent of the current demand raised and 16.4 per cent of the target amount," Chandra said, adding that the situation stands bad even after dedicating a full quarter of the fiscal to recovery work.