Hoping to limit cooking gas subsidy to only the deserving, the Income-Tax Department will begin sharing data on taxpayers earning over ₹10 lakh annually with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

Along with the list of such taxpayers, it will also provide information about their Permanent Account Number, date of birth, gender, available addresses, e-mail ids, residential and mobile numbers.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) will soon sign an agreement for this with the Oil Ministry, said an official, adding that the transfer of information will begin soon.

“A formal order has now been issued. The information will be taken out and given in the coming weeks,” he said.

All households are entitled to nine cylinders of cooking gas at subsidised rates but to prod “consumers in the higher income bracket should get LPG cylinders at the market price”, the government last year had scrapped the subsidy for those who had a taxable income of over ₹10 lakh during the previous financial year.

Customers were expected to submit a self-declaration of their income while booking cylinders from January 2016 onwards.

Give-it-up scheme



While over 1.05 crore households have voluntarily given up their LPG subsidy, the government has been concerned over misuse of the benefit. The Oil Ministry is understood to have also written to the CBDT for the information on taxpayers.

The subsidy given up is then used for new LPG connections for below poverty line households.

In 2015-16, the government provided nearly 63 lakh new LPG connections to such households.

According to an Oil Ministry statement, as many as 3.34 crore duplicate, fake, ghost and inactive domestic LPG connections connections were identified. Following, the exercise, only 16.99 crore consumers are registered to avail themselves of the subsidy as on November 28 this year.