The Income Tax Department has saved a potential interest outgo of up to Rs 4,000 crore by an early payout of refunds to taxpayers in April, a top official of the Department said today.”In the month of April, we have issued more than 20 lakh refunds all over the country which is a record number of refunds issued in April,” Central Board of Direct Taxes Chairman Sudhir Chandra told reporters here.
By doing so, the department has saved Rs 4,000 crore.
“The refund would have been (otherwise) issued in March 2012,” he said. According to a recent report, in absolute terms, the refunds worked out to Rs 20,000-crore.
Chandra said the Department has already finished over 90 per cent of the work on refunds and is targeting to finish it by the third week of June.
In another good news for salaried taxpayers, Chandra said the Department will formally notify the budget announcement of no tax returns to be filed for individuals earning up to Rs 5 lakh by June.
“In cases where the TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) is already done, we already have all the relevant information with us. Why should we ask him (tax-payer) to come to us again?” he said.
Chandra declined to give a specific answer when asked if the department is considering to raise more demands after a favourable ruling it got in the Vodafone case wherein the British telecom major was asked to pay USD 1.7-billion as tax.
When asked if such demands by the Department would dent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows into the country, he said, “I don”t agree with it.” .
