Spending data helps taxman recover Rs 37,000 crore from non-filers in 20 months

New Delhi: The income tax department has recovered ₹37,000 crore over the last 20 months from individuals who were not filing returns despite taxable income, officials said.

Data on high-value transactions, including purchase of gems and jewellery, property and spending on luxury holidays, where payments were made by cash since 2019-20 was analysed before reaching out to them. "These are the cases where people were not filing tax returns despite making large purchases. The department had reached out to them over the past 20 months," a senior official told ET. A widened and more stringent tax collection and deduction at source (TDS) regime has aided in tracking high-value transactions that may have somehow skipped the lens earlier, the official said.

The official added that there were instances of individuals filing returns declaring zero income despite large spending and tax liability. Of the ₹37,000 crore, a recovery of ₹1,320 crore was made from people engaged in high-value transactions, the official said.

The department is running an extensive campaign where it is reaching out to taxpayers if their expenditure pattern is not as per income declaration made in their tax returns. It is using data and analytics to detect tax evasion and has deployed the Non-Filer Monitoring System (NMS) aggressively since FY21 to identify such individuals.

"Data from multiple sources is being tapped and synchronised... This makes it easy for the department to identify such evasion and nab evaders," the official added.

Direct tax collections in April-November rose 15.4% to ₹12.10 lakh crore, including corporate tax of ₹5.10 lakh crore and non-corporate tax of ₹6.61 lakh crore, official data showed.