More in AIR: Foreign travel, car buy to attract taxmen
The income-tax department is considering expansion of the annual information return (AIR) in a bid to expand its tax information net.
By Deepshikha Sikarwar, TNN |
NEW DELHI: Travelled abroad or bought a car recently? And yes, this could apply to the house you bought for Rs 20 lakh as well. The income-tax department is considering expansion of the annual information return (AIR) in a bid to expand its tax information net.
Besides, the department is also looking at lowering the real estate transaction limit from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 20 lakh for collection of data and cash deposits of up to Rs 1 lakh in a savings account. The department is keen to bring some more transactions under the third-party information system.
It is contemplating taking into account some of the transactions that were captured by the Central Information Branch (CIB), its data collection wing. Since the CIB is handling the AIR data now, which is considered more relevant and practical in present circumstances, the department wants to bring some of the CIB transactions under the AIR, a source told ET.
The field formations have also made a recommendation in this regard to the Central Board of Direct Taxes. Data on foreign travel and car purchases could be acquired with the permanent account number (PAN) of an assessee. Since CIB has been collecting the information, their inclusion under AIR should not be a problem. Data with PAN is more useful for the department since it is easier to track assessees.
However, the expansion of AIR is contingent to creation of National Data Centre that would be able to process data (in effect, income-tax returns) from all over the country. The process to set up the centre has been delayed due to retendering for servers.
The AIR are information returns that are filed by third parties such as mutual funds, property registrars, banks and credit card companies. It was implemented in 2004. The AIR was notified on December 1, 2004.
At present, the department gets data on seven transactions under the AIR. These include cash deposits of up to Rs 10 lakh in a year in a savings account, annual credit card spend of up to Rs 2 lakh, mutual fund investment of up to Rs 2 lakh, investment in shares through public or rights issue of up to Rs 1 lakh, investments in bonds or debentures of up to Rs 5 lakh, sale and purchase of property of Rs 30 lakh and investment of Rs 5 lakh in RBI bonds.
In 2004-05, the department received 18.70 lakh pieces of information involving transactions worth Rs 13,99,890 crore. In 2005-06, it received 15.85 lakh pieces of information involving Rs 23,25,521 crore.
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