Chandigarh, June 25
As part of the massive exercise to restructure the Income Tax Department for widening the tax base, another major shake-up at the middle level is expected later this month or early next month.
The department was silent on the issue of not shifting certain officials who have had long stays in a particular region and have been posted again in the same area even after promotions. In one case, for example, one officer after joining as Assistant Commissioner has risen to the rank of Commissioner but remained posted in only a few select cities in the NW Region.
Hundreds of officers of the rank of Income Tax Officer and above, due for promotion, are expecting their orders any time as their Departmental Promotion Committee meetings have already been held and recommendations sent to the Central Board of Direct Taxes. The last such meeting was held on June 18.
Sources reveal that by July 15, after completion of the first phase of the major restructuring exercise, the new look Income Tax Department would be in place.
“It is not only promotions and transfers, the department has to show results now,” says a senior functionary, maintaining that a stupendous target of generating Rs 84,000 crore as revenue had been set for the current year.
Last year, the target was Rs 70,000 crore and the department generated Rs 66,000 crore. But since some concessions wee announced by the Finance Minister, the exact revenue generate was Rs 56,000 crore.
“Now they have increased our target by 28,000 crore , which is 50 per cent of what we actually achieved last year. It is a tough task,” admits another top functionary of the department as it hopes to double the number of income tax assessees, from the present 2.5 crore to 5 crore during the current year.
“We do not want numbers alone. We want people to pay taxes,” he said.
The endeavour of the CBDT is to downsize the department, improve its efficiency, widen the tax base and computerise the whole process.
A part of the ongoing drive, the jobs would be cut by 4.75 per cent. Instead of the lower division clerks, data entry operators and other allied jobs, the department plans to have only taxation assistants who would be able to computer-generate a receipt for income tax returns while another assistant would, by punching into the system certain details, calculate the exact tax chargeable or refundable.
With computerisation, not only would the efficiency improve but the common complaints of corruption would also come down considerably, the sources said. In the next five years, the functioning of the department would be fully computerised and people would be able to e-file their income tax returns.
Until a few years ago, there was only one Chief Commissioner of Income Tax for the entire Bihar, Orissa and seven North Eastern states.
But today, after the first phase of restructuring, Bihar has two Chief Commissioners, Orissa has one and North Eastern states have two Chief Commissioners of Income Tax. “We have squeezed areas but increased the workload,” said another official of the department.
In the North West region also, there used to be only one Chief Commissioner. But now Ludhiana, Amritsar and Panchkula also have Chief Commissioners. By the beginning of October, even Shimla will have a Chief Commissioner.
Basically, each important district in the region has a Commissioner of Income Tax. In its effort to attain the revenue target, the department plans to extend 1/6 scheme to all urban areas as identified by the 1991 Census, meaning thereby that nearly 100 towns in Punjab and an equal number in Haryana and a substantial number of towns in the rest of the country would be covered by this scheme, thus increasing both the number of IT assessees as well as revenue.
