The Income tax department is making a strategy to enhance the efficacy of the present tax collection procedure and as a result, get more taxpayers under its fold. The strategy involves three parts- functional specialization, jurisdiction-free assessment and taxpayer segmentation.
Let us have an overview on the three parts of this tax collection strategy-
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Functional specialization
This plan will divide functions among multiple persons specializing in separate areas of tax assessment, verification, returns and so on. At present, one officer is assigned to handle the entire operation for each of the taxpayer.
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Jurisdiction-free assessment
This assessment plan would empower any tax official to notify any taxpayer in the country through email, even if the said person is not under the officer’s jurisdiction. It is also expected that it will cut back corruption as the various processes will be segmented and handled by separate people.
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Taxpayer segmentation
This will separate small time taxpayers from big players. The department wants to be in regular interactions with the big companies and businessmen as the stakes are large too.
The Income tax department has a high tax collection target to meet this year. Their aim is to collect Rs.9.8 lakh crore in financial year 18 i.e. 15 percent more than what they had collected in last fiscal year.
Recently, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) directed the Income Tax department to monitor tax collection thoroughly. The Central Board of Direct Taxes Chairman, Sushil Chandra has asked his regional chiefs to personally monitor the revenue collection work, which is the single most parameter for evaluating the performance of the department. On review of the position of budget collection as on March 4, it is noted that as against the target growth rate of above 14 per cent, the current rate of growth of net collections is only 10.6 per cent, which does not augur well for achievement of the budget target in the current year. The board tax collection in FY17 was slightly less than its target. Net income tax collection till June 15 grew at a healthy 26.2 percent year-on-year to Rs.1,01,024 crore from across the country.