New Delhi, Sept. 8 -- India's top indirect tax body wants to strictly avoid aggressive enforcement, preferring a "soft nudge" approach to encourage tax compliance instead. Alongside, it will tally income tax returns with goods and services tax (GST) returns to check for potential mismatches, and watch out for an abnormal use of input tax credits to check evasion.

Tax officers should avoid going on an overdrive with any single enforcement method or sending premature notices that create fear among businesses, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) chairman Sanjay Kumar Agarwal said. The message comes in the context of some of the states leveraging digital transaction data to send tax notices to small vendors, leading to a backl...