good things never come cheap if you are of the kind who takes to shopping as a way to relax think again the taxman may be waiting a few steps away from your house with an annual shopping report yes you heard it rightp chidambaram has no doubt raised the tax bar for the salaried class but he has introduced some new ones under the heading widening the tax base in budget 2004 to expand the tax collectioneffective from april 1 2005 the incometax department will insist on the filing of an annual information return for financial transactions worth rs 50000 or more during the yearlets get down to the finer details for instance if you plan to buy clothes and accessories for worth rs 5000 a television set or a refrigerator costing rs 15000 you will have to maintain a tax logbook to furnish the information to the tax authoritiesif you fail to furnish the information a penalty of rs 100 awaits you at the end of the fiscalthe annual information return has to be furnished either on a floppy cdrom or any computerreadable medianext page highvalue transactions will be tracked the clause was originally mooted by former finance minister jaswant singhs in his budget 200304 however it could not be implemented as there was no mechanism set in place to enforce the furnishing of annual information returnthe annual information return data will be fed into the tax information network which will be the central clearing house for all tax data the incometax department will therefore be able to track highvalue transactions in the economy and check if tax has been paid on themthe incometax department does not have this kind of expenditure data it solely depends on income details like salary and other income to trace tax evasionaccording to the clause specified financial transactions have been defined as transaction of purchase sale or exchange of goods or property or right or interest in a property or a transaction for rendering any service or a transaction by way of an investment made or an expenditure incurredhowever incometax experts are still grappling with the definition of transaction