Income tax collection from the Ludhiana region increased 31.66 per cent during the last financial year as compared to the previous fiscal.

The department's gross collections from the region comprising - Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Nawanshahar, Ludhiana, Moga and Malerkotla -- have reached Rs 1,244 crore, surpassing their target by more than three per cent.

M S Rai, Chief Commissioner, Income Tax, Ludhiana Commissionerate, told reporters here today that as many as 266 survey operations were conducted in the Ludhiana region, which yielded an extra income of Rs 40 crore to the department.

He asked the tax payees to give correct bank account and permanent account numbers on the Income Tax return forms, so that the refunds could directly be deposited into the accounts.

For checking the loopholes of tax evasion, computerisation of income tax accounts in all the offices was being done. All the IT offices would be interlinked within next six months, he said.

The number of tax assesses has increased to 7.07 lakh in the region, with the addition of 1,16,771 people during last fiscal.

A target to add 1.40 lakh new IT assesses in the current fiscal has been fixed, for which door-to-door survey was being conducted, Rai said.