Budget to focus on job creation: Revenue secy

NEW DELHI: Revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia on Wednesday said the budget would seek to boost economic growth and employment, apart from providing a level-playing field to domestic manufacturers, with the Make in India initiative being a special thrust area.
Adhia also identified tax rationalization and simplification as a possible focus area and sought to dispel the notion of harassment of taxpayers.He told a TV channel that less than 1% of tax returns are randomly selected for scrutiny. “These are mostly big cases, 99% of the cases are not scrutinized and returns are accepted as filed by the assessees,” a finance ministry statement quoted Adhia as saying.
The budget will be presented at the end of the month amid demands from various quarters to push their interests, including suggestions of an increase in tax concessions for savings in specific instruments.
Asked about the need to double tax receipts, the revenue secretary said the current tax-GDP ratio was around 10%, which was low, but added that there was a need to balance this with the capacity of the people to bear the burden. He suggested that rationalizing the tax administration and removing unwanted exemptions could help push up the ratio.
Adhia said only 3-3.5% of the population paid taxes as there was a large section that depended on agriculture and small enterprises with a sizeable below poverty line population, which was not liable to pay tax given that their income was below the Rs 2.5 lakh exemption limit.
“However, due to Tax Deduction at Source (TDS), many more people are paying tax even though many of them may not be filing their tax returns," he said.
He said currently, 3.5-4 crore people are filing income tax returns, and 1.85-2 crore people pay tax through TDS, bringing the total number of tax payers close to 6 crore. He said total number of tax payers has nearly doubled in last three years, which is a big achievement,” the finance ministry statement said.