Armed with crucial information, tax authorities will tighten noose on evaders and send SMS to 1-1.5 crore high-value Diwali purchasers to file Income Tax returns before the October 31 deadline.
"The best way to celebrate Diwali is to file your returns the previous day on October 31 so that you hold your head high and enjoy the festival," Finance Minister P Chidambaram told newspersons on Thursday.
"We have more information than what people think and all those 1-1.5 crore mobile owners, who have made purchases more than Rs 10,000 will get SMS to file their tax returns before Oct 31," he said.
Sharing some of the information with the tax authorities, the finance minister said 1,27,511 parties or individual entities have made cash withdrawals of more than Rs 10 lakh during the year and he expected them to be potential IT assessees.
You can file tax returns on Oct 29, 30
Likewise "we have figures that 3,23,563 credit card payments of over Rs 200,000 have been made during the year," he said, adding there were 4,00,966 mutual fund purchases of over Rs 200,000 and all these are potential tax assessees.
There are only 85,000 tax assessees showing an income of over Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million) a year and the figure has to be certainly much more, he said, adding, "we hope to double, triple or quadruple it in a very short time."
Chidambaram, who on Thursday launched a last-minute campaign for filing tax returns, said it will be done in a "demonstrative way" by he himself going to Income Tax office to file his returns on October 31, though never in the past had he done it on his own.
Chidambaram said for the next four days the focus would be to encourage 2.4-2.5 crore income tax assessees to file returns and help centres would be set up to facilitate people to file returns on their own without going to chartered accountants.
The help centres would function next Saturday and Sunday as well and work much beyond office hours, he said, adding more counters would also be opened so that everybody can file returns carefully without any last minute pressure.
Chidambaram said huge volumes of information have started flowing the introduction of Annual Information Return last year to capture high-value transactions.
The finance minister said the last date for filing AIR had been extended till Nov 30 as this being the first year and some people are still not familiar with the procedure.
"There will be significant compliance," he said, adding the penalty will "kick-in" after November 30 if AIR is not filed by them.
"We have issued instructions to all AIR obligees of the law and instructions have gone to credit card company management, CMDs and EDs of banks, mutual fund chiefs, registrar and sub-registrar of properties to file their AIR immediately," he said.
"My advice to all income tax assessees is to file returns," he said.