News
                                                                                                                                  17th June, 2006

Over 1 lac I-T assessees added in AP

Individual tax payers will have the option of filing their returns in the existing `Saral 2E' form up to July 31, 2006 for the assessment year 2006-07 or the newly introduced 4-page, 2F.

However, after July 31, the 2F form would become mandatory. The Centre notified the new Income-Tax return form 2F on June 1.

The time up to July 31 is mainly to give sufficient time for taxpayers to familiarise themselves with it, according to Mr D.V. Dharmik, Chief Commissioner of I-T, Hyderabad.

In efforts to clear the confusion on the new Form, he said a Help Centre to benefit the tax payers in the twin cities had also been set up to create awareness about the form and procedure.

The new form does not require any documents but detailed filing, including cash flow statement (which would be optional for 2006-07 ).

The idea is to get details on expenditure on high value items for cross checking. With the annual expenditure captured, the department could do its job without intrusive investigation or asking the assessees questions, Mr Dharmik told newspersons here on Friday. On the follow up of notices sent to 5000 individuals who did not have PAN numbers but were detected to have high-value expenditure, Mr Dharmik said, 1200 were returned with addressee not found.

"In these cases, we are going to the source of the information. In the balance 3,800, we are at various stages of investigation", he added.

Over a lakh new Income Tax assessees have been added during the year as part of the Department's drive to expand the base, the Chief Commissioner of I-T said.