The Finance Ministry will seek to simplify the latest income tax returns without compromising on the effort to curb black money and tax avoidance. This was the message Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and senior Revenue Department officials conveyed to industry representatives and tax professionals at a meeting convened to review income tax forms, here, on Friday.

It was a positive meeting and the Finance Minister heard some of the challenges that would be faced by assessees while filing their tax returns, CII President Sumit Mazumder told BusinessLine after the meeting.

Besides the controversial issue of disclosing foreign travel details, the other major issue that figured in the meeting was the details on bank accounts.

Foreign travel

Indications are that a new threshold may be specified by the Revenue Department for disclosure of foreign travel details.

Jaitley is understood to have conveyed that the government was only looking to gather information on non-official travel (private travel) and also saw no reason why bank account-related information cannot be shared with tax authorities.

Sidharth Birla, former FICCI President, said he had suggested that it would be better if the earlier income tax return form was continued with some minimal tweaking instead of completely reworking it.

He also felt that income tax returns should not get into subjective areas (such as details on foreign assets and related income).

Divya Baweja, Partner, Deloitte, Haskins & Sells, said it was a “positive meeting” and that the Finance Minister seemed amenable to industry’s suggestions.

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