By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, OCT 30, 2014: THE Union Finance Minister, Mr Arun Jaitley, asked the senior officers of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) not to  lose sight of domestic black money keeping in view its much higher magnitude. He asked the senior officers of the Department to make their best efforts to chase those sectors where the domestic black money is mostprevalent. He said that the recovery of black money and taxes due thereon will also help the Department in achieving its tax collection targets. The Finance Minister was speaking at a Review Meeting of Principal Chief Commissioners, Principal Directors General, Chief Commissioners and Directors General of Income Tax here today in order to assess and analyse the achievements of  the Budget Targets for Revenue Collections for Financial Year 2014-15. The Meeting was also attended among others by the Minister for State for Finance, Ms Nirmala Sitharaman, Revenue Secretary, Mr Shaktikant Das, Chairman CBDT, Mr K V Chowdary, Members of CBDT, senior officers of the Ministry of Finance and CBDT.

The Finance Minister said that with the rise in economy prospects, it is expected that the Revenue Department would be able to achieve its targets for the year 2014-15. Revenue Collection targets for Direct taxes for the  Financial Year 2014-15 has been fixed at Rs. 7,36,221 crore and the Department has made net collections as on 20 th October, 2014 of Rs. 2,96,802 crore during the current year (1 st April-20 th October, 2014).  Gross collections were to the tune of Rs. 3,77,652 crore while Refunds  were  made of Rs.80,850 crore during this period. Thus Gross Collections grew at the growth rate of 13.6 %.

Mr Jaitley further said that certain sectors of economy such as services sector are doing well while other sectors including manufacturing sector are gradually picking-up compared to previous years. He expects that performance of economy during the Quarter 3 and 4 of the current Financial year would be better than previous ones. He asked the tax officials to widen the tax base in order to bring more and more people within tax domain. He said that senior officers of the department shall act and behave in a assessee friendly manner but at the same time ensure that tax payers don't evade tax and must pay the taxes due from them.