Income tax offices throughout the country will remain open on Saturday and Sunday to accept income tax returns. For the benefit of tax payers in Delhi, special arrangements have been made at Pragati Maidan for receiving income tax returns from July 27 to July 31.

However, the department of posts, which was authorised to receive income tax returns in July, 2006, as one-time measure in view of the circumstances prevailing at that time, has been discontinued, said government.

Meanwhile, FM P Chidambaram emphasised the need to accept returns on trust, and to devise less invasive measures to check tax evasion, using more data from AIR (Annual Information Return), BCTT (Bank Cash Transaction Tax), and tax returns filed by individuals.

The department should use data mining in a non-discriminatory way to check tax evasion, he said while addressing the two-day annual conference of chief commissioners and directors general of income tax recently. He asked income tax officers to work hard to bring down taxpayers' grievances.

Chidambaram was confident that during fiscal 2007-08, at the current GDP growth rate of 9%, a growth of 16.3% in direct tax collection would be achieved.

He said, in the area of recovery of tax arrears, significant progress has been made in the last four years. For the first time in over 35 years, the cumulative tax arrears as on March 31, 2007 declined as compared to arrears at the beginning of the financial year.

Filing of e-TDS returns will be compulsory for certain category of taxpayers from September 1.