North-East tax collection target pegged at Rs 1000 cr

GUWAHATI: The chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), P K Sarma on Saturday asked tax officials of the North-Eastern states to enhance annual tax collection to Rs 1000 crore from the present Rs 810 crore in the next couple of years.
He expressed satisfaction over the tax collection from the region despite the fact that the tribal population in the region is exempted from payment of direct taxes.The North-East at present accounts for nearly one per cent of the total income from tax collection in the country.
Sarma was in the city to lay the foundation stone of the proposed Kar Bhawan. It is to be constructed at a cost of Rs 12 crore and would house 350 tax officials. Speaking to TNN, Sarma said that better infrastructure and computer knowledge were the key for tax officials willing to deliver better results and fight the practice of tax evasion. He said a better monitoring mechanism should be evolved to stop the corporate sector and large business houses like OIL, ONGC and the tea Industry in Assam from evading taxes.
“The manual system of working has failed to deliver the desired results and six projects each worth Rs 5 to 6 crore are being implemented in the country to improve the infrastructure for the tax department officials and employees to show better results�, he said. On the other hand, the chief commissioner, income tax, Shillong, Dilip Kumar Das, told TNN that computerisation has been slowly picking up in the North-Eastern states. According to him, guidelines given to the tax officials at the metropolitan cities to make themselves computer savvy cannot be followed in the North-Eastern region due to logistical problems. He said that all income tax return counters in the region would be computerised beginning April 1 this year.
The chief commissioner of income tax, Guwahati,D. Chatterjee, when contacted, said that among all the North-Eastern states, Assam contributed the highest per centage of taxes from the region as, except the residents of Tripura, those living in most of the other states were not paying taxes due to their tribal status.
It maybe recalled that income tax commissioner Jagrup Singh, while recently talking to the media, had informed that the collection of the department from the charge of the chief income tax commissioner of Guwahati last year stood at Rs 258 crore. Meanwhile, the current target has been fixed at Rs 371 crore. The number of assesses in this charge as on January 31 is 4,49, 810. Guwahati is the only city in the North-Eastern region where the income tax department’s One By Six scheme is currently being implemented.