New Delhi, August 29: To weed out black money and end the menace of corruption from the system, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, 2016 announced the scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes. As per recent reports, the Income Tax Department is facing major manpower crunch. Due to this crunch, there are no officials in the department to carry out different processes like tracking people and taking action against them. In a letter to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the Income Tax Department’s Employees Organization has requested to provide necessary manpower.
As per reports by Money Bhaskar, about 3,000 posts of Income Tax Inspector are vacant and the burden of work at the level of Assessment Officer is very high. Due to this, the Income Tax Department is not able to take action against people not following the rules related to tax evasion and income tax. The government has taken a lot of efforts to weed out black money from the system. As per reports by Money Bhaskar, the organization says that if the government provides necessary manpower, then the Income Tax Department can add 10 million people to the tax net. Reports state that till August 5 this year, the Income Tax Department has added 3.3 million new ASSI, i.e. 33 lakh people to the tax net. Sources were quoted saying that if there was sufficient manpower then this number could have been up to 10 million.
The CBDT earlier this month said that all income tax offices will remain open until Saturday midnight to facilitate manual filing of income tax returns for the 2016-17 fiscal on the last day fixed for such filings. The government had extended the deadline to file income tax returns (ITR) to August 5. “As a result of demonetisation and Operation Clean Money, there is a substantial increase in the number of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) filed,” the Finance Ministry said here in a statement.
According to sources, 40 percent of the Income Tax Department posts were vacant in the time of demonetisaton. Now 9 months after the ban, the number has increased to almost 50 percent. The government in August first week said the income tax returns filed in the current fiscal has seen a 25 per cent increase and the advance individual income tax collections have gone up by 42 per cent. As many as 2.83 crore income tax returns were filed till August 5 this year as compared to 2.27 crore returns filed in 2016-17 assessment year.
