India has just 24.4 lakh tax payers who declared an annual income of over Rs 10 lakh yet 25 lakh new cars, including 35,000 luxury cars, are being bought every year for last five years, a top official said
New Delhi: India has just 24.4 lakh tax payers who declared an annual income of over Rs 10 lakh yet 25 lakh new cars, including 35,000 luxury cars, are being bought every year for last five years, a top official said.
A nation of over 125 crore people had only 3.65 crore individuals filing their tax returns in the assessment year 2014-15, the official said alluding to a huge number of individuals being outside the tax net. “Of the 3.65 crore individuals (filing returns in assessment year 2014-15), there were only 5.5 lakh people who paid income tax of more than R5 lakh and accounted for 57 per cent of the total tax kitty. This essentially means that only 1.5 per cent of those filing tax returns (3.65 crore) are contributing to 57 per cent of tax kitty,” the official said.
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The tax returns when compared with car sales throw astonishing numbers, he said.
“Car sales on an average in last five years have been about 25 lakh per year. In the last three years the car sales were 25.03 lakh, 26 lakh and 27 lakh," he said adding the statistics points to a large number of people having income to buy cars are outside the tax bracket. The income tax data collated shows only 48,417 persons reporting income of more than Rs 1 crore in a year. Yet luxury brands like BMW, Jaguar, Audi, Mercedes, Porsche and Maserati sell almost 35,000 cars every year.
Of the individuals filing returns, 5.32 lakh were with income of less than Rs 2 lakh per annum, and so not within the tax bracket.
He said 24.4 lakh filers declared their annual income of being more than Rs 10 lakh and there were 1.47 lakh tax fillers who had an income of over R50 lakh in a year.
Also during the 2014-15 Assessment Year, there were 1.61 crore people whose tax deducted at source (TDS) were deducted but they did not file income tax return (ITR), he said.
48,417
No of people whose income is more than Rs 1 crore every year
35k
No of luxury cars like Jaguar, Porsche etc sold every year
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