The Income Tax Department on Friday said it had written to 35,000non-filers. This raises the number of such letters sent by the department this year to 245,000. The department is also planning to write to those who carried out high-value transactions in 2010-11 and 2011-12.

By mining its database, the Income Tax Department has identified about 1.2 million non-filers.

The letters are part of a massive exercise to identify high-risk non-filers of income tax returns and ask them to file returns and pay taxes. To contact taxpayers who had shifted to different locations or those who refused to receive these letters, the department had sought help of field formations, the finance ministry said in a statement on Friday. “Assessing officers posted all over the country have been supplied the details of such taxpayers on an online monitoring system. They have been asked to contact taxpayers and persuade them file returns and pay due taxes,” it said.

A total of 344,365 returns have been filed by those who received these letters. Self assessment tax of Rs 577 crore and advance tax of Rs 408 crore have also been paid.

The finance ministry said this exercise would continue till all potential non-filers were covered. It is developing a dedicated module on the e-filing portal to provide the details of returns not filed, ITR-V not submitted, demand not paid, etc, to taxpayers. Taxpayers can also post comments on the portal.

As about a quarter of permanent account number (PAN) cardholders who were sent letters for failing to file income tax returns didn’t get an intimation because of a change in address, the Income Tax Department had started an exercise to identify these tax evaders in eight major cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune.

While 140 million people in India have PAN cards, the number of taxpayers is only 34 million. Many of those who don’t file returns secure PAN cards because these serve as a proof of identity.

About 13,00,000-14,00,000 new PAN cards are issued every year by the tax department, while the details of just 0.2 per cent of the applicants are verified by it. (PTI)