Press Information Bureau

Government of India

Ministry of Finance

08-June-2011 14:31 IST

CBDT Sets-up a Committee to Examine And Suggest Ways to Recover Income Tax Demand Classified Under the Categories “Assessees not Traceable” and “No Assets/Inadequate Assets for Recovery.

                        In order to examine certain suggestions on Income tax Demand classified under the categories “Assessees not traceable” and “No assets/inadequate assets for Recovery”, a Committee has been constituted by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) with following constitution:

i)          DGIT (Admn) - Smt. Anita Kapur - Chairperson

ii)         DIT (Recovery) –        Smt. Sheba Bhattacharya - Member

iii)        DIT(Systems)-III - Shri Harish Kumar - Member

iv)        Director (ITCC) – Shri Deepak Garg - Member

v)         A nominee of FIU-IND - Member

vi)        Addl. DIT (Recovery) – Shri H. A. Siddiqui - Member Secretary

vii)       Any other member(s) to be co-opted by the Chairperson

            The modified terms and conditions of the Committee will be as follows:-

i)          To suggest modalities for utilization of the information available with FIU-IND and the Directorate of Income Tax (Systems) for the recovery of outstanding demand in such cases.

ii)         To examine the possibilities of engaging the outside  agencies to locate the whereabouts of non traceable assessees or their assets and also unknown/undisclosed assets owned by the assessees with inadequate assets vis-à-vis the outstanding demand.

iii)        To propose a reward scheme for informants who supply information about such tax defaulters and which results into collection of the outstanding demand.

iv)     To propose a scheme regulating such outsourcing to outside agencies for its administration by the field formation

v)         To examine the feasibility and methodology of putting the names of chronic tax defaulters in public domain.

            The Committee shall submit its report within two months of its constitution.

            Earlier, it was noticed that there is a huge outstanding demand which is not recoverable due to the following reasons:

(i)     Demand difficult to recover due to reason that assesee is not treaceable

(ii)   Demand difficult to recover due to reason that no assets are available for recovery

Attempts are being made from time to time to recover this outstanding demand by using the asset and bank information available with the Finance Intelligence Unit (FIU) and Annual Information Report Data of System Directorate of Income Tax Department.  The list of defaulters is also matched with the asset data available.  There is a good possibility to locate some assets to realize this outstanding demand.  To further achieve this objective, synergy in the functioning of Directorate of Recovery, Directorate of Systems, CBDT and Financial Intelligence Unit is also created. 

Beside above, in the current wave of transparency and anti-corruption drive, there is a demand to put the list of chronic defaulters in the public domain.  This will also put the onus on the taxpayers to liquidate their demand.

DSM/SS/GN

Tax recovery for untraceable assessees: using intelligence sharing, asset tracing and outsourcing to enhance collections. A CBDT committee will develop measures to recover income tax demands classified as assessees not traceable and no assets/inadequate assets for recovery, including use of FIU IND and Directorate of Systems data, engagement of external agencies for tracing taxpayers and assets, a reward scheme for informants, and regulatory schemes to outsource and administer these activities within field formations.