The government on Friday told Parliament that income tax evasion had crossed Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) in 2003-04.

In a written reply, Minister of State for Finance SS Palanimanickam said the figure was 226 per cent more than the level of tax evasion recorded in 2002-03, when it was Rs 1,546.40 crore (Rs 15.46 billion).

The minister said the data was culled from the searches and seizures conducted by the Income Tax department, under section 132 of the Income Tax Act.

Palanimanickam said since there were adequate measures provided in the IT Act itself, there was no need for any special contingent plans to recover the arrears.

The total amount of Income-Tax evaded in 2001-02 stood at Rs 1717.17 crore (Rs 17.17 billion). While there was slight decline of about 10 per cent to Rs 1546.40 crore (Rs 15.46 billion) in 2002-03, the figure jumped to Rs 5,041.71 crore (Rs 50.42 billion) in 2003-04.

The evasion is about 5 per cent of the total direct tax collections for the fiscal. Over the past few years, the finance ministry has been tightening the control mechanism over tax evasion.

But in 2002-03, because of the large-scale transfer of tax officials as a result of their cadre review, the number of search and seizure cases had fallen drastically.