NEW DELHI, SEPT 14, 2013: THERE are 12 lakh non-filers of income tax return. As per the CBDT study, a good number of them are high-spenders and assets accumulators. So, to recover the tax dues, the Income Tax Department embarked on a novel path - to collect the tax bill by appeal. And their strategy seems to be working well. In response to 'letters' sent to them, as many as 3.44 lakh non-filers have returned their income and also paid the tax with interest. As much as Rs 577 Crore of tax and Rs 408 Crore of advance tax has come to the Revenue kitty.

Encouraged by such a response the Department has issued fresh bunch of letters to another batch of 35,000 non-filers this week. With this latest batch, the Department has now issued letters in 2,45,000 cases.

In order to contact the taxpayers, who have shifted their address or have refused to receive the letter, the help of field formations in being sought. The assessing officers posted all over the country have been supplied the details of such taxpayers on an online monitoring system. The assessing officers have been asked to contact the taxpayer and persuade them file their return and pay due taxes.

The Income Tax Department plans to pursue such cases vigorously to spread the message that while the Department is improving its taxpayer services to facilitate honest taxpayers, it also has the will to go after recalcitrant taxpayers. This exercise will continue till all potential non-filers are covered.

The Department now proposes to extend this exercise to persons who have conducted high value transactions during F.Y. 2010-11 and F.Y. 2011-12. It is also developing a dedicated module on the e-filing portal which will give details of returns not filed, ITR-V not submitted, demand not paid etc to individual taxpayer. The taxpayer can post his comments so that situation on such issues is crystallised. This will be one more step towards greater transparency and minimizing the grievance of tax payers.