According to Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) chief Nitin Gupta, the income tax agency has received approximately Rs 4,600 crore in taxes from the 5.6 million revised I-T forms that taxpayers have filed during the previous two years. Gupta also revealed that the I-T department has established a demand handling unit in Mysuru, Karnataka, which is concentrating on contested pending big tax demands of more than Rs 1 crore, in a post-budget interview with PTI TV.
"We are always enhancing the offerings and fostering a dispute-free atmosphere. We have developed a feature for updating returns. Gupta stated, "5.6 million updated returns were filed, and from those, taxes totaling about Rs 4,600 crore were collected."
The Interim Budget 2024–25 declared the cancellation of unfulfilled income, wealth, and gift tax requests up to Rs 25,000 until 2014 - 15, some of which even go back to 1962. There are roughly 11.1 million of these contested demand entries, and between Rs 3,500 and Rs 3,600 crore in total tax demand is at stake.
According to Gupta, the action will help roughly 8 million Distinct Taxpayers
"We are handling small tax demands in this way (withdrawal of demands), and we are handling large tax demands in another way (through demand management center)." We believe that this approach will pay off handsomely for us, and it will enable us to better effectively manage demand," Gupta stated.
Gupta stated that the majority of the contested demands that were included in the budget are actually on the books. There may be situations in which the taxpayer has already paid the tax demand, but because it was made when things were done manually, the information has not been updated on the system. According to Gupta, some of the demands might also be false in that regard because the taxpayer may have already paid them or may not owe them, but no documentation of this exists.
"So, this is a move we have made to eliminate all of these and lessen taxpayer complaints. We think that the type of entries that the Finance Minister mentioned in his budget speech could amount to a crore or more, and the number of taxpayers could be as high as 80 lakh or so," he stated. He also added that the department could clean its books and that taxpayers would benefit from this exercise.
