Income Tax Department Starts giving Certificate of Appreciation

Income Tax Department Starts giving Certificate of Appreciation.

The Income Tax department has started a new and unique thanks giving for the honest tax payers.
The honest tax payers get a e-mail from the income tax department, which are are divided into various categories, depending upon how much the tax payer pays.
The income tax department sends a mail to a honest tax payer which contains the required attachments – a certificate of appreciation – that can be downloaded, printed and framed for posterity.
The e-mail has a noval catch too.

• “bronze” category, where bulk of income tax payers will remain, by virtue of paying income tax in the range of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, a year.
• The tax payers who have contributed between Rs 10 lakh to Rs 50 lakh will be in the silver category.
• Those who contribute between Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore will be in the gold category.
• All those who pay Rs 1 crore and above as income tax will be the platinum category tax payer.

About a month before CPC started sending thousands of similar mails to tax payers who have been prompt at filing returns, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had formally kicked off this ‘appreciation’ exercise when, on 19th September, he handed over certificates of appreciation issued by CBDT to select tax payers.
The CBDT terms this move as the first effort by the government to directly communicate to the tax payer, its appreciation for the contribution. Given the negative image income tax department has been generating through their tax demand notices every year, a positive communication, perhaps, was much needed.
The department will be sending out such certificates of appreciation to individual tax payers by e-mail in various categories on the basis of the level of taxes paid by them for the current Assessment Year 2016-17 where taxes have been paid in full and tax payers have no outstanding tax liabilities and where the return is e-filed within the prescribed due date.
CBDT encourages the tax payers to display these certificates in their homes and offices.