The chairperson of the Central Board of Direct Taxes, Sushil Chandra, on Tuesday said the department will not issue demand notice to taxpayers in case of a minor discrepancy between their income tax return and the corresponding tax credit data.

The measure was introduced in the latest Finance Bill and is aimed to provide relief to small and salaried class of taxpayers, PTI reported.

“A policy decision has been made not to issue tax demand notices in case of minor mismatch in these instances,” Chandra told the news agency. “We trust the taxpayer and the step is aimed to make easy the processing of income tax returns.”

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However, cases where the mismatch is higher or gives rise to suspicion of tax evasion, a detailed scrutiny will be conducted, Chandra added.

The CBDT usually matches the data provided by the taxpayer through their Form 16 and Form 26AS received by the department from multiple banking and financial institutions. The Income Tax Department’s central processing centre would issue the demand notices in case of a big mismatch.

Bitcoin earnings

Chandra said that those who are making money from bitcoins would have to pay tax and action will be taken against those who try and evade the tax authorities.

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On February 3, Economic Affairs Secretary SC Garg had said that by the end of the current financial year, there will be regulations to oversee the cryptocurrencies in the country. “We hope that within this year, the committee would finalize its recommendations and then it would require legal changes, regulatory assignments,” Garg said at a CNBC TV18-Mint event on Union Budget 2018.

During his Budget speech in Parliament on February 1, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that the Centre will crack down on the use of cryptocurrencies in India. “The government will take all steps to eliminate the use of cryptocurrencies which are being used to fund illegitimate transactions,” he had said.