The Union Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, said on Saturday that the Income-Tax Department was using several ways including deploying search engines to unearth tax evaders and mine information.

Mr Chidamabaram, who inaugurated the country's first Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) here, said search engines were being developed to help the department to identify tax evaders in the country. He said though there were a few tax evaders who believe that they can hoodwink the authorities, the department had enough information about them.

He said the Government plans to open LTUs in Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata with at least two expected to be set up before the end of this fiscal.

There were a total of 830 entities including 282 in Mumbai, 202 in Delhi, 132 in Chennai, 131 in Kolkata and 83 in Bangalore, who were eligible to join the units. He said the cost of tax collection, which was 0.67 per cent was expected to drop further to 0.64 per cent this year. He said modern management principle was needed to collect tax.

Out of 83 eligible large taxpayers in Bangalore, 31 were part of the LTU and the total tax revenue from them during 2005-06 was Rs 1,464 crore.

This fiscal it was expected to grow to Rs 1,800 crore.