The department plans to ask all assessees to pay their tax arrears. "We are basically asking those assessees to pay arrears where the department has greater chances of winning the appeals," Income-tax (I) chief commissioner B Misra said.

"The department can legally collect the entire tax demand within 30 days of the demand being raised on the assessee. Since we want to give a fair chance to tax-payers, we allow them to pay their dues partly while the matter goes into litigation," the chief commissioner said.

The department's initiative to collect arrears will not only help raise revenue collections, but may also wipe out the huge interest burden on the asseessee's back, he said. "If the taxpayer loses the case, he will have to pay huge interest on the arrears," Misra said.

The second corrective step by the department will includeapproaching big corporates house should there be a shortfall in the advance-tax collection. "We will definitely want to know the reason which will cause the shortfall in the revenue," he said.

The department also plans to zero in on tax deducted at source (TDS). According to Misra, the department has observed many instances in which the tax deducted by various bodies is not deposited with the department.

"There are many organisations, including government and semi-government bodies, which deduct the tax deducted at source but do not pay the amount to the exchequer," he said.

Meanwhile, revenue collections from Mumbai have reported a slight increase. The department netted around Rs 1,330 crore corporate tax as on July 20, registering a jump of around 4.5 per cent over the first-quarter collection of Rs 921 crore.

Net income-tax collections were pegged at Rs 1,071 crore against Rs 845 crore collected in the first quarter. "The revenue collections have started increasing, but we have a long way to gobefore we reach this year's target," he said.

Misra said the Central Board of Direct Taxes had set a revenue target of around Rs 17,000 crore for fiscal 1998-99. This includes a target of around Rs 11,000 crore as corporate tax, around Rs 4,000 crore as income-tax and around Rs 750 crore as interest tax.

Net corporation tax collections till June 31 were Rs 921 crore (Rs 325 crore) while the income-tax figure was pegged at Rs 845 crore (Rs 766 crore).Gross collections (including refunds) for the same period was Rs 2,542 crore for corporation tax as against Rs 1,767 crore in the same period last year.

The gross income tax revenue is pegged at Rs 939 crore (Rs 867 crore) 5 per cent plant-load factor; b) not permitting additional profits to be derived by the developer on account of the actual operational performance being better than the normative level fixed for the purpose of tariff fixation; and c) review of equipment project cost and invite global tenders.

Though Ispat group which, initially, wasreluctant to accept the first two conditions, ultimately decided to give in. On the review of EPC and inviting global tender for the selection of EPC contract, however, the group declined to accept it saying that it will lead to a "statutory crisis."