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In Jharkhand, out of total 85,71,852 Permanent Account Number (PAN) holders, 9,72,668 filed Income Tax Returns (ITRs) in Assessment Year 2018-19. 

There are total 46,10,20,587 PAN holders in the country. Among them, 6,31,84,403 PAN holders filed ITRs in the same period of time. Total Direct Tax collection from Jharkhand was Rs. 6933.66 crore in the financial year 2018-19, while the country’s total Direct Tax collection stood at Rs. 11,37,685.41 crore. 

These facts came to light after Union Minister of State for Finance  Anurag Thakur replied to a question asked by MP Parimal Nathwani on July 9, 2019.

As per the Minister's statement, the government has taken a number of initiatives to increase tax-payer base in the country including implementation of the Non-Filer Monitoring Systems (NMS) by the Income Tax Department. It assimilates and analyzed in-house information as well as transactional data received from third-parties.

The aims were to identify such persons/entities, who have undertaken high-value financial transactions but have not filed their returns.

In fact, Nathwani wanted to know about the amount of income tax collected in the assessment year 2018-19 and the number of PAN holders registered as well as the details of Government's planning to increase tax-payer base in the country.

As a result, it was found that the mechanism for collection and verification of financial information has been broadened to include data in respect of various types of high-value transactions from banks and financial institutions and high-value expenditure from commercial establishments in the form of Statement of Financial Transaction (SFT), said the minister.

He further said that the scope of TDS and TCS has been expanded by bringing more taxable transactions within their ambit and quoting of Permanent Account Number (PAN) has been made mandatory for specified transactions in respect of property, shares, bonds, insurance, foreign travel, demat account, etc.

The statement also said that the Income-tax Department has initiated Project Insight to strengthen the non-intrusive information-driven approach for increasing tax compliance and effective utilization of information in tax administration. This integrated platform would play a key role in the widening of tax-base and tracking of tax evaders. 

 

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