FM urges excise dept to step up drive against evasion

The Government is now looking to plug excise revenue leakages via a more rigorous set of deterrent steps and by obtaining third-party information that could be matched against the information on indirect taxes submitted by assessees. The third-party information collection system is proposed to be modelled on the annual information return (AIR) system that has become successful on the direct tax side. The Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, on May 29 advised the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) to revisit the existing deterrent measures, stating that they were not deterrent enough. As many as 49 cases have been subject to deterrent measures. The idea is if you take action against one person, found guilty of excise evasion, the deterrent action taken against that assessee must have salutary effect on the assesses of the same product group.