Income Tax Department needs 30,000 more employees.

Income Tax Department needs 30,000 more employees.

Shortage of staff and clamoring for additional staff is everywhere but who listens ? Here is Yahoo India News highlighting plight of Income Tax Department ?

The Income Tax Department needs to immediately add 30,000 more employees to carry out its existing operations, a senior Finance Ministry official said.
"To avoid affecting the overall revenue collection and delivery of tax payer services, the department immediately requires 22,000 additional employees apart from filling up the 8,000-odd vacant positions," the official said.
The department has 58,000 sanctioned positions and about 8,000 posts are lying vacant. He said the department needs 4,000 officers (including 2,000 assessing officers), 4,000 inspectors, 12,000 tax assistants, data entry operators and other support staff, and about 2,000 as reserves.
The matter for additional staff will be raised in the annual conference of Chief Commissioners to be held in New Delhi on June 9 and 10, the official said. "The department requires more staff to handle the massive data gathered by it through third party mechanism like Annual Information Return (AIR) and Central Information Branch (CIB)," he said. The annual information return of high value financial transactions is required to be furnished under the Income-tax Act, 1961 by 'specified persons' in respect of 'specified transactions' registered by them during the fiscal.

The registering authorities for AIR are the Reserve Bank, and registrar of properties among others. CIB collects information relating to specified transactions for which providing Permanent Account Number (PAN) is mandatory such as opening up of bank accounts, deals above Rs 50,000, property purchase of above Rs 5 lakh, and foreign travel involving expenditure of above Rs 25,000. "The expansion of workforce from the current 50,000 to 80,000 would solve the immediate concerns of the department. This will help in detecting tax evasion cases and deepen and widen the tax base," the officer said.

Source: Yahoo India News


Central Government Employees NPS gives 14.82% average returns

Central government employees who joined as a part of the contributory New Pension Scheme (NPS) have earned a weighted average return of 14.82 per cent during 2008-09, the first year when three fund managers managed a corpus of around Rs 2,000 crore.

This has outperformed any another form of Investment like PF etc. Its a Win Win situation for both Govt as well as Employees.

This is in contrast to the annual 8 per cent returns between January 2004 and March 2008 when the government had not transferred the money to the three fund managers – SBI Pension Fund, UTI Retirement Solutions and LIC Pension Fund.

The Centre moved all employees joining from January 1, 2004 to NPS, where they have to chip in with a contribution of 10 per cent of their basic salary with a matching contribution made by the government. While the money was being deducted, it was parked in a government account and earned a fixed rate of return.

While the corpus will increase this year, partly due to higher contribution and also due to the release of some of the arrears following the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations, the equity investment is also expected to go up.

At present, around 5 per cent of the corpus is invested in equities against the permissible limit of 15 per cent.

This year onwards, the fund management fee is also going to decrease to 0.0009 per cent (or 0.09 basis points), in line with the pension scheme for non-government employees, as against up to 5 basis points last year.

In addition, state governments are expected to join the scheme. While 21 states have shown their willingness to join NPS, none of them have started releasing the funds as some of them, unlike the Centre, are reluctant to bear the costs, such as those related to the record-keeping agency.

Department of posts to distribute new pension system

The Department of Posts, Government of India, has been enlisted as a Point of Presence (PoP) for distribution of the New Pension System (NPS) by Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority (PFRDA). The Department of Posts (DOP) would, to start with, make the NPS available at over 800 of its branches all over the country, and expand the distribution network to more branches in a phased manner in its endeavour to make NPS available to all citizens in all parts of the country. Both PFRDA and the Department of Posts see significant potential and synergy in this partnership for the development of the NPS and believe that it will significantly further and promote the Government’s initiative to provide old age income security to all citizens of India.

NPS is currently being distributed by 21 entities through nearly 800 branches spread all over the country. PFRDA is working with these institutions to bring all their branches under NPS in a time-bound manner. NPS will now be sold through over 1600 outlets of DOP and other entities.

PFRDA is also considering proposals from other entities seeking authorization to act as a PoP. PFRDA has accorded over-riding priority to expansion of NPS distribution network in its effort to make NPS available within the easy reach of all citizens.