this story originally appeared in on mar 6 2013new delhi taxpayers with annual income of over 5 lakh will now have to file their returns in electronic form a senior finance ministry official said on tuesday the threshold limit for efiling of returns was 10 lakh last year the efiling allows for faster processing of income tax returns and settlement of errors and omissions even the wealth tax returns will now have to be filed electronically income tax returns for the group above 5 lakh all such returns will be efiled this is a move towards using technology so that the interface between assessing officer and assessee is minimised revenue secretary sumit bose said at a ficci event in delhi bose also said that the tax department was making efforts to widen the tax base and targeting pan holders who have not filed returns the department has already sent notice to 35000 such taxpayers and is in the process of sending 35000 such notices the finance bill 2013 has inserted a provision to facilitate efiling of wealth tax returns in order to facilitate electronic filing of annexureless return of net wealth it is proposed to insert new sections 14a and 14b in the wealthtax act on similar lines the amendments will take effect from june 1 2013 the memorandum to the finance bill 2013 said the revenue department also defended the stringent provision that include arrest of service tax defaulters to check rampant evasion of taxes on service tax side in the recent past where they assessees have blatantly misused the provisions particularly in those cases where they have recovered the money from people and not given to government cbec chairperson praveen mahajan said at the same event pegging the evasion at 200 crore to 400 crore only 7 lakh out of 17 lakh registered service providers filed returns last year the finance bill 2013 has through section 91 provided for powers to arrest a person for specified offences particularly nonpayment of collected service tax failure to deposit service tax amount exceeding 50 lakh could result in imprisonment of up to seven years if the bill is passed we are nonadversarial power to arrest have been given to commissioner there are enough safeguards the provision will be reviewed from time to time so there is no reason to be concerned she said the bill also provides that offences relating to excise and customs duty evasion of over 50 lakh would be made cognisable and nonbailable customs collection during 201213 is estimated at 165 lakh crore as against the target of 187 lakh crore excise duty the realisation is likely to be 172 lakh crore compared to the target of 194 lakh crore