The revenue dept predicts shortfall of around Rs 20,000 crore.

Net direct tax collections are likely to grow at a much slower rate of 5-7 per cent in the current fiscal 2009-10 because of the global economic crisis adversely affecting the Indian economy, said a senior finance ministry official.

Even for this growth, the revenue department is planning to collect through tightening of Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) and also through increased scrutiny of tax returns filed with the department.

It would be very difficult to achieve growth this year due to the ongoing global financial meltdown. However, focusing on investigating approach that we adopted last fiscal would help us reach the target of Rs 3,60,000 crore, said the official.

At this level, the new estimate by the revenue department is nearly Rs 20,000 crore less than earlier target fixed in the interim budget 2009-10.

Incidentally, this year, the governments net direct tax collections are expected to be around Rs 3,40,000 crore, which has mainly come from TDS collection through concerted efforts.

Property transactions to be under scanner:
The tax department has identified property transactions as one focus area to increase their collections. It has been noticed that capital gains tax have not been paid even on the registered value of the property, a revenue department official said.

Income Tax authorities are now trying to map the property transactions from the local authorities and see whether tax has been paid on them or not. This exercise is likely to yield revenues, but a number could not be quantified.

The department is also looking at capital gains made when a property is taken over under land acquisition. Here, too, it was found that in many transactions tax have not been paid.

Earlier, the revenue department found many realtors misusing Section 80 IB provisions that deal with exemption for developing homes for the poor. Many firms had violated this provision and the department had raised tax demand on such violations.

Apart from these, the I-T Department is planning to continue the best practices that yielded results in fiscal 2008-09. Among them is checking whether companies that have deducted tax under TDS have actually paid the tax to the I-T Department or not.

Last fiscal, the department was able to identify more than 100,000 cases in one quarter, the official said.

A list of top 1,000 TDS payers has been prepared under both corporate and direct tax heads. From this list, the I-T Department would look out for firms that do not come in the top 1,000 list and do a scrutiny on those companies for any under payment.