Slow filing of SFT ahead of deadline a concern

Nagpur: A little more than 5% of the registered entities in Nagpur circle had filed statement of financial transactions until four days ahead of the income tax (I-T) department deadline of May 31. Non-filing leads to penalty of Rs500 a day for delay and Rs1,000 if not filed despite issuing a notice.A whole gamut of agencies like property registrar offices, banks, including cooperatives, mutual fund houses, hospitals and jewellers and companies have to file SFT. These agencies, termed as registered entities (REs) in tax jargon, have to report transactions over a certain financial limit to the I-T department. For example, any real estate deal involving Rs30 lakh and above by an individual has to be reported. For cooperative banks, it is cash deposits ranging from Rs10 to 50 lakh.SFT is a mechanism for counter-checking the taxpayers' I-T returns. If a certain transaction is not disclosed in return, it can be flagged through SFT, leading to action by the taxman. However, to ensure a proper check, complete filing of SFT is needed, said sources.The Nagpur circle of I-T department covers districts in Vidarbha and Marathwada regions. There are over 5,500 registered entities here. Out of these, 500-odd are active REs — a term used for the entities that have been filing SFTs for tge last three years. Among the active REs, around 200 have submitted the returns till May 27. This comes to 5% of the total REs in the region.There is a likelihood that the non-active entities may not have filed the statement because transactions that are needed to be reported may not have happened at all. However, there is no inbuilt mechanism to confirm it, except a physical survey of the records by tax slueths, said sources. This year, the department here unearthed over 40 lakh unreported transactions involving an amount of Rs25,000 crore in all, said sources.Box # Errors galore in filingsThe taxmen have come across a number of erroneous SFT filings too. In a substantial number of returns, the permanent account number (PAN) is missing. PAN is the basis of cross-checking the individual returns with SFT details. In some cases, a wrong PAN is mentioned. This leads to unnecessary scrutiny of the person whose PAN is mentioned. Other KYC details are missing too. An error report is generated in such filing and a fresh statement has to be filed. Lack of compliance is largely among cooperatives, said source. The I-T department has been holding outreach programmes for proper and timely filing. Taxmen have urged the entities to carefully put in the details.