"Only by reducing or waiving off these charges more and more people will be encouraged to go for digital transaction," members suggested.Those who attended the meeting included several MPs from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha besides the FM, MoS finance S P Shukla, chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian , the Revenue secretary, the finance secretary and the CBDT chairman.The finance minister said the I-T department has taken various initiatives in the last 2-3 years in order to bring about efficiency, transparency and fairness in tax administration. He said the concept of 'no scrutiny' was introduced for the first time for non-business tax payers having income of up to Rs 5 lakh so that "more and more people are encouraged" to join the tax net and file their I-T returns.A single page ITR-1 form was introduced for tax payers having income up to Rs 50 lakhs. This time 97% of the returns were filed electronically, out of which 92% were processed within 60 days and 90% refunds were issued within two months.Highlighting the impact of note ban and the "proactive initiatives", he said the revenue collections in case of direct taxes rose to Rs 8,49, 818 crore during 2016-17 at a growth rate of 14.5%. The collections up to September 18, 2017 in the current financial year rose to Rs 3.7 lakh crore, a growth of 15.7%. The number of tax payers increased significantly from 4.72 crore in 2012-13 to 6.26 crore in 2016-17, he said.

Source: Times of India September 29, 2017 15:56 UTC