New Delhi

Access to data of “undisclosed” real estate assets located overseas — under active consideration of G20 countries — will further boost the technology-driven compliance system of the income tax authority, which was one of the key factors behind a robust 22% jump in annualised net direct tax collections in the first half of 2023-24 at over ₹9.50 lakh crore, a senior official said on Tuesday.

G20 countries are working on automatic exchange of data related to undisclosed “immovable properties” abroad beyond the current arrangement of sharing financial data, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) chairman Nitin Gupta said.

On the initiative of the Indian presidency, leaders of the G20 agreed to cooperate towards “a globally fair, sustainable and modern” international tax system and adopted the OECD Report on Enhancing International Tax Transparency on Real Estate in their Delhi Declaration on September 9. The OECD report proposed automatic exchange of such information among countries on a real-time basis.

“Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who is visiting Marrakech (Morocco), is also expected to deliberate on this matter,” a finance ministry official said requesting anonymity. The FM is scheduled to attend the annual meetings of the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), along with G20 meetings.

Providing provisional details of direct tax revenues in the little over six months of the current financial year (April 1 to October 9, 2023), Gupta said the collections continued to register steady growth, with gross collections at ₹11.07 lakh crore, a 17.95% year-on-year jump.

After refunds, direct tax collection in the period was ₹9.57 lakh crore, a 21.82% y-o-y jump, which is 52.5% of the total Budget Estimates (BE) for the current financial year (2023-24), he said. According to the Union Budget, the BE for direct tax revenue in the entire FY24 is ₹18,23,250 crore, including corporate income-tax (CIT) of ₹9,22,675 crore and personal income tax (PIT) of ₹9,00,575 crore.

According to the latest data released on Tuesday, as on October 9 of the current financial year, the growth rate for gross CIT revenue was 7.3%. The gross PIT (excluding securities transaction tax or STT) revenue, however, grew by 29.53%. With STT, the gross PIT revenue growth was 29.08%.

After adjustment of refunds, the net growth in CIT collection for the period was 12.39% and that in PIT collection was 32.51% (PIT alone), and 31.85% (with STT). The income tax department issued refunds of ₹1.5 lakh crore between April 1, 2023 and October 9, 2023, according to the data.

Gupta said the option of the new tax regime is picking up as about 70% of individual tax payers (PIT) are likely to switch over to the exemption-free income-tax regime. In order to make the new regime attractive, the FM on February 1 announced raising the rebate limit for this category to ₹7 lakh from ₹5 lakh. According to the CBDT chairman, about 60% of corporate income is already under the exemption-free tax regime with a lower tax rate.

For the convenience of taxpayers, the income-tax department is reaching out to about 3.5 million assessees whose refunds are held up due to technical reasons, including changes in IFSC codes of their respective bank branches, Gupta said. The department is first sending them an email in this regard offering assistance through a special call centre – the Demand Management Facilitation Centre.

“We want to credit the refunds to the correct bank accounts of the taxpayers quickly,” the CBDT chairman said. The facility, initially available in Karnataka, Goa, Mumbai and Delhi, is expected to be available in other areas soon.