Salaried taxpayers may be spared filing returns

Salaried taxpayers with no other income could get a respite from filing tax returns. The Income Tax (I-T) Department is open to examining a proposal to exempt them from the annual chore. Asked whether the department would think about doing away with income-tax returns for employees, who had no other income apart from salaries in a financial year, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chairman Sudhir Chandra said the department would certainly consider the proposal. He agreed that for a substantial chunk of salaried employees, savings bank interest is the only additional income and that in most cases, this not substantial. This proposal, if approved, will benefit a large section of people and would reduce the I-T departments workload in a big way. Of the country’s 35 million taxpayers, roughly half are salaried employees. The proposal to do away with returns for salaried taxpayers was earlier internally mooted within CBDT a few years ago. The argument in favour of the proposal was that income records for this class of taxpayer were available with both employers and banks.