Nearly 35 lakh non-tax filers with tax liability have been identified, informed Finance Minister. (Image: PTI)

The government collected nearly Rs 26,500 crore till December last year in form of tax through a non-filer monitoring system, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in a written reply told Parliament on Friday. fe “Due to constant and intensive follow-up of NMS data, more than 1.72 crore tax returns have been filed by the persons in different NMS cycles and self assessment tax of about Rs 26,425 has been paid by them till December, 2017,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. The Finance Minister said that the Ministry has now broadened the mechanism of accumulation and verification of financial information by including various types of high-value transactions from banks and financial institutions in the form of Statement of Financial Transaction (SFT).

Nearly 35 lakh non-tax filers with tax liability have been identified, informed Finance Minister. He also said that Permanent Account Number (PAN) is helping in producing enough data that the tax department is comprehensively mining to track tax evaders. For the April-January period, direct tax collection grew by 19.3 percent to Rs 6.95 lakh crore against the needed 18.3 percent growth for the full year to meet the revised estimate target of Rs 10.05 lakh crore in the current fiscal. The government revised the direct tax collection target upwards from Rs 8.5 lakh crore, in the Budget presented earlier this month.

For the 10 months of the fiscal, net collections for corporate income tax grew by 19.2 percent while the personal income tax mop-up rose by 18.6 percent. The government said that refunds amounting to Rs 1.26 lakh crore have been issued during this period. Experts attributed collection growth to formalisation of the economy as a result of demonetisation and roll-out of the new indirect tax regime GST. The direct tax collection growth had slowed down to just over 14 percent. for the April-November period but picked up in the subsequent months.