The income tax department will extend the advance ruling facility to the resident tax payers from the current year, K V Chowdary, chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes(CBDT) said here on Friday.

Till now this facility was only available to the non-resident tax payers. The scheme of advance rulings was introduced by the Finance Act, 1993, Under the scheme, the power of giving advance rulings has been entrusted to an independent adjudicatory body.

Accordingly, a high level body headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court has been set up. This institution is empowered to issue rulings, which are binding both on the income-tax department and the applicant.

With the advance ruling facility the applicant can have an idea of the possible tax liability before entering into a particular transaction, according to Chowdary.

Responding to a question on important areas where the tax evasion is high, the newly appointed CBDT chairman said the tax evasion has been high in the real estate sector whether in boom period or in a downturn.

Last year the I-T investigations wing had detected Rs 90,000 crore crore in undisclosed income from 5,327 surveys conducted by the department.

The department has directed its surveys mainly at power sector, mobile phone trading, real estate, steel and chemical sectors, according to Chowdary.

To a question on the reported failure of low cost airliner SpiceJet in issuing the Form-16 pertaining to the TDS (tax deducted at source) of its employees, Chowdary said the department has been looking into these violations. "Action is to recover the tax, then penal interest and some penalty will be there," he said.

On Nokia tax issue he said the matter was party pending before the court.

The department is expected to complete the assessment by the end of this year if no new stays are issued by courts in this case, according to him. Regarding the Vodafone issue, he said the company was in the process of appointing a third arbitrator. ( Business Standard)