Early refunds have saved interest out-go of Rs4,000 crore: I-T Dept

The Income Tax Department has saved a potential interest out-go of up to Rs4,000 crore by an early pay-out of refunds to tax-payers in the month of April, a top Department official said today.
    
"In the month of April, we have issued more than 20 lakh refunds all over the country which is a record number of refunds issued in April," Central Board of Direct Taxes Chairman, Sudhir Chandra, told reporters here.
    
By doing so, the department has saved Rs4,000-crore. "The refund would have been (otherwise) issued in March 2012," he said. According to a recent report, in absolute terms, the refunds worked out to Rs20,000-crore.
    
Chandra said the Department has already finished over 90% of the work on refunds and is targeting to finish it by June third week.
    
In another good news for salaried tax-payers, Chandra said the Department will formally notify the budget announcement of no tax returns to be filed for individuals earning up to Rs5 lakh by June.
    
"In cases where the TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) is already done, we already have all the relevant information with us. Why should we ask him (tax-payer) to come to us again?" he said.
    
Chandra declined to give a specific answer when asked if the department is considering to raise more demands after a favourable ruling it got in the Vodafone case wherein the British telecom major was asked to pay $1.7-billion as tax.
    
When asked if such demands by the Department would dent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows into the country, he said, "I don't agree with it."
 
On the other contentious debate over allowing the Department to continue with its powers to tap phones which has arisen following the Niira Radia tapes scandal, he gave a measured answer, saying, "the circumstances in which the power to intercept phones was given, there is no change in those
circumstances."
   
"We have done deep searches and very large amounts of black money have been unearthed, interceptions have been helpful," he said.
    
For curtailing the menace from tax havens, India has already entered into tax information exchange agreements with five countries while in case of seven others, it is in advanced stages of negotiations. It had identified a total of 22 such 'tax havens', Chandra said, adding it will engage in negotiations with the remaining 10 soon.
    
In the last one-and-half-years, the investigation wing of the Department has resulted in the recovery of Rs32,000-crore on account of transfer pricing, Rs35,000-crore on account of international taxation and Rs30,000-crore through searches and seizures, he said.