I-T recovers ₹73,500 cr in pending bills

The income tax department has recovered ₹73,500 crore of pending dues in this financial year up to March 15, on the back of a targeted recovery plan drawn up as part of efforts to step up collection of outstanding tax arrears, officials said.

Of the total, pending corporate tax dues amount to ₹56,000 crore, ₹16,500 crore is personal income tax and ₹50 crore is undisclosed income from foreign assets, said a senior official.

"We have recovered about ₹73,500 crore and the number may go up further," the official told ET on condition of anonymity. The department had collected over ₹52,000 crore in FY23.

The official said while it was difficult to give year-wise details of outstanding dues, the collection averaged 8% of annual outstanding till 2021-22, which went up to 10.78% in 2022-23 and is about 17% in this fiscal so far. Pending tax arrears, which had crossed ₹21.94 lakh crore in January 31, 2023, from ₹15 lakh crore in April 2021, have been a key area of concern for the tax department.

The department had drawn up a roadmap to help it recover outstanding dues more efficiently, including identification of cases where recovery was possible, use of technology to track untraceable defaulters and handing out zone-wise targets to field formations.

"This year the recovery is much better and in the last two-and-a-half months only we have recovered ₹37,000 crore," said the official cited earlier. In some cases, arrears date to assessment years 2003-04 and 2004-05, for which the department tracked defaulters through the use of technology. In some cases, though taxes had been paid, they were not reflecting in their system and effort was on to update the database, the official said.