The Union Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, announced that the Centre has sent one lakh notices for non-filing of returns, under-reported income, and misrepresentation of income. These notices were sent to individuals whose income was found to be close to Rs 50 lakh. The notices were for old returns filed 4 to 6 years earlier, and they were sent during the last 14 months.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) completed a scrutiny assessment of 55,000 notices that were sent pursuant to a Supreme Court judgment.
The CBDT chairperson, Nitin Gupta, stated that more than 4 crore income tax returns (ITR) were filed for the fiscal year 2022-23. The government has processed more than half of these ITRs, resulting in Rs 80 lakh refunds.
The Finance Ministry shared data in Parliament indicating that the number of ITR filings reached a record 74 million in FY23. However, 51.2 million (70%) of these filings were zero-tax ITRs, meaning the taxpayers claimed nil tax liability.
Tax officers can reopen past assessments up to six years under income tax law, but the minister mentioned that tax assessment cannot be opened after the sixth year.
Due to the shortage of manpower in the Income Tax department, there is a lot of pending work, and the CBDT chairperson urged for the approval of a cadre restructuring proposal.
The Finance Minister assured that the entire block of one lakh notices will be cleared by March 2024.
CAclubindia
