HYDERABAD, Dec 15: The income tax commissioner, Hyderabad region, Sardar Ameenullah Khan, has stressed the need for enlarging the tax net and said the Central Board of Revenue has declared the current year as the income tax year.

Talking to tax payers at the conference hall of the Hyderabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry here on Sunday night, he said efforts were being made to bring the people whose annual income exceeded Rs80,000 in the tax net.

The appellate commissioner, income tax, Noor Mohammad Mandukhel, and other senior officers of the department were also present on the occasion.

Mr Khan said if there was no increase in the number income tax payers, those who were already paying tax would have to bear additional burden.

He said a strategy had been evolved to find new income tax payers and added that the task would be carried out by Dr Farrukh Ansari, a senior officer of the department.

He assured the HCCI that the department would take decisions in consultation with industrialists and traders.

Mr Khan said there was a need for cooperation between tax payers and tax collectors to develop the tax culture.

He said he would make efforts to remove the perception that all income tax officers were corrupt and tax payers were thieves.

He said he was the chairman of the committee that drafted the new income tax law. He said the committee received about 50 proposals through the media and the trading community which were included in the amendments.

The officer said he was ready to invite experts at a seminar if tax payers wanted to educate themselves in tax laws.

He said the government was striving to adjust around 53 withholding taxes in the next three to four years and to decrease the rate of taxes in every budget.

He agreed with the HCCI that about 90 per cent of tax returns, filed by tax payers for 2003-04, were incomplete.