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Mumbai. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that IT dept has sent 1 lakh notices for non-filing of returns, under-showing income and giving wrong information. These notices have been sent to those people whose income is close to Rs 50 lakh and they are expected to clear them by the end of this financial year. In the 164th Income Tax Day celebrations, Nirmala Sitharaman said that all these cases are of old returns filed 4 to 6 years ago. Sitharaman said, '1 lakh notices have been sent to those whose income has been found to be more than the filed income, or there is sufficient evidence of it being more, but they have not given the information, or the information which is mandatory to be filed, but they have not been filed.

Notices sent after home work

Sitharaman said, 'I want to tell you that the notices have not been sent without thinking. I have been assured by the CBDT chairman that by March 2024 these entire blocks will be cleared. The officials later confirmed that the notices were sent during the last 14 months and mostly to people with an annual income of more than Rs 50 lakh. Responding to a question in the House, she said that the government has instructed all public and private sector banks not to take drastic measures for repayment of loans. Banks should consider the matter with humanity and sensitivity.

authorities can reopen 6 year old case

Under the Income Tax Act, the authorities can reopen previous assessments of up to six years. The minister said the CBDT has completed the scrutiny assessment of 55,000 notices in May 2023, which they had sent as per the Supreme Court judgement. She said, “The board is not just sitting on the notices issued. If someone is messing with the system, we have a clear-cut approach regarding that." Sitharaman added, 'Earlier taxpayers had to keep records for 10 years, but now tax assessment is not done for more than 6 years. In the fourth, fifth and sixth year, the tax officer opens these records only under special circumstances.

So far more than 4 crore people have filed ITR

CBDT Chairperson Nitin Gupta said that so far more than 4 crore people have filed ITR for the financial year 2022-23. The government has also processed more than half of these applications, due to which refunds of more than Rs 80 lakh have been made so far. He further said, 'There is a huge shortage of manpower in the Income Tax Department, due to which there is a huge amount of pending work. He has urged Sitharaman for new recruitments at the earliest. Sharing data related to ITR, the Finance Ministry had said that a record 7.4 crore ITRs have been filed for the financial year 2022-23, but 5 crore 12 lakh (about 70%) applications have been filed for zero-tax. There has been an increase of 14% in the number of ITR filings in the last 4 years, although the number of zero tax payers is 77%.