The income tax department needs to immediately add 30,000 more employees to carry out its existing operations, a senior finance ministry official said.

"To avoid affecting the overall revenue collection and delivery of tax payer services, the department immediately requires 22,000 additional employees apart from filling up the 8,000-odd vacant positions," the official said.

The department has 58,000 sanctioned positions and about 8,000 posts are lying vacant.

He said the department needs 4,000 officers (including 2,000 assessing officers), 4,000 inspectors, 12,000 tax assistants, data entry operators and other support staff, and about 2,000 as reserves.

The matter for additional staff will be raised in the annual conference of chief commissioners to be held in New Delhi on June 9 and 10, the official said.

"The department requires more staff to handle the massive data gathered by it through third party mechanism like Annual Information Return (AIR) and Central Information Branch (CIB)," he said.

The annual information return of high value financial transactions is required to be furnished under the Income-tax Act, 1961 by 'specified persons' in respect of 'specified transactions' registered by them during the fiscal.

The registering authorities for AIR are the Reserve Bank, and registrar of properties among others.

CIB collects information relating to specified transactions for which providing Permanent Account Number (PAN) is mandatory such as opening up of bank accounts, deals above Rs 50,000, property purchase of above Rs 5 lakh, and foreign travel involving expenditure of above Rs 25,000.

"The expansion of workforce from the current 50,000 to 80,000 would solve the immediate concerns of the department.

This will help in detecting tax evasion cases and deepen and widen the tax base," the officer said.