I-T department to scan tier-II cities to widen tax net

The Income Tax department has decided to use technical intelligence and pay special focus on tier-II cities like Jaipur, Surat and Lucknow among others, to bring more and more people living in these "progressive" cities under the tax net.

The new plan is expected to be set in action as early as next month and is part of the governments' recent directive to the taxman and its apex policy making body CBDT to bring in at least 25 lakh new assesses under the tax ambit every month.

The department, senior officials privy to the development said, "will unleash the power of its smart-technical intelligence and business computation databases to tap on these potential entities and ensure that the overall tax regime remains non-adversarial and non-intrusive while undertaking this task".

These strategies to "significantly expand the tax base" will be discussed threadbare as a key point by the top brass of the I-T department and Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) during their two-day annual conference <g data-gr-id="37">begining</g> here tomorrow.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will inaugurate the meeting held traditionally over the years.

"A trend analysis done by CBDT and other agencies point towards the fact that the tier-II cities have a very large untapped potential in terms of getting more individuals and entities to come under the tax paying bracket," the officials said.

These cities are seen as progressive on the revenue front.

"The department has decided to undertake this task in a mission mode," a senior I-T officer said.

CBDT Chairperson Anita Kapur had indicated the taxman's intention in this regard when she recently wrote to the field offices of the I-T department that the "number of existing income <g data-gr-id="43">tax payers</g> is low compared to the potential and the gap between the potential and the actual <g data-gr-id="44">tax payers</g> appears to be wider in the case of tier-II cities and towns. 

"Considering the priorities of the government and the need to widen the tax base, a concerted and focused effort in mission mode is required. "We have to strive for adding at least 25 lakh new assesses per month during the current financial year," Kapur wrote.

The tier-II cities include Surat, Nagpur, Lucknow, Vadodara, Jaipur, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Indore, Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Rajkot, Bhopal, Kanpur, Thane, Visakhapatnam, Faridabad, Kalyan, Navi Mumbai, Ghaziabad, Ludhiana and Nashik among others.