Collection, collation and dissemination of information by Central Information Branches. - Income Tax - 1104/CBDT

INSTRUCTION NO. 1104/CBDT Dated : October 3,1977 Section(s) Referred: 276 ,285 ,269P ,285A ,285B Statute: Income - Tax Act, 1961 In the light of the circumstances prevailing in their respective jurisdictions, the commissioner of Income-tax draw up annual programmes for collection, collation and dissemination of information by Central Information Branches from the potentially fruitful areas. The Board do not desire to interfere with the programmes drawn up by the Commissioners. However, it is suggested that during the current year, particular attention may be given to gathering and effective utilisation of the following information. (A) Information contained in statements/returns prescribed under sec.269-P, 285,285A, 285B and 286 of the Income - tax Act. 2. Annual/Trade/Financial Directories constitute a readymade source of information regarding persons engaged in a particular trade or business. Each Central Information Branch is expected to equip itself with such Directory (ies) which may be particularly useful having regard to the trades/businesses etc. being carried on within its jurisdiction and to extract suitable information therefrom and transmit it to the concerned assessing officers. The C.I.B. should also keep and upto-date list of the State and Central Government Disbursing Officers in its area and arrange to extract and communicate to the assessing officers payments on a particular account(s) that may be considered fruitful. 3. Valuable information is also received from persons deducting tax at source under sections 192 to 194, 194A, 194B, 194C, 194D, 195 and 196. The information contained in these returns should be extracted and communicated by the Officers to whom these statements are statutorily submitted direct to the Income-tax Officers assessing the payees and should not be routed through the Central Information Branch. similarly, the information contained in the returns received under section 133/various annexures to the returns of income, and also information obtained in the course of assessment proceedings should be extracted and communicated to the concerned officers by the assessing Income-tax Officers, who gets the information. The duty of ensuring that the information is duly verified is that of the recipient Income-tax Officer. The Range Inspecting Assistant Commissioner having jurisdiction over the recipient Income-tax Officer will check that this item of work is properly attended to and a record of revenue gain, if any, is duly maintained. 4. The Board presume that in accordance with the instructions contained in their Instruction No.859* (F.No.173/52/74-IT(A-I) dated 2nd August, 1975, the Commissioners are regularly inspecting the work of the Central Information Branches. Pending a detailed work measurement study, the Board's Instruction No.1049 (F.No.415/14/76-IT(Inv) dated 19th March, 1977 lays down, on an ad hoc basis, the minimum annual output expected unit-wise in a Central Information Branch and advises maintenance of complete output record to enable the advise maintenance of complete output record to enable the performance of the Branch to be gauged as also to facilitate work measurement study by the O M Directorate. Commissioners should satisfy themselves that the Central Information Branches are duly maintaining such a record. Through a regular system of feed-back and occasional checks, the Central Information Branch should ensure that the receiving Income-tax Officers carry out the requisite verification. The C.I.B. should also be able to report how far the communication of a particular category of information items has proved effective by way of additional revenue gain. 5. Board's Instruction No.1079 (F.No.412/4/727-IT(INV) dated 21st July, 1977 requires that at places where the Intelligence unit is headed by a Deputy Director, the Central Information Branch should be placed under his administrative control. The Board would like to have an early confirmation from the concerned commissioners that this has been done. As advised in the above instruction, at other places, the Commissioners themselves should see that the Intelligence Unit and the Central Information Branch work in coordination.