I-T Dept to Soon Issue Notices to Suspicious Cash Depositors

I-T Dept to Soon Issue Notices to Suspicious Cash Depositors

The Income Tax Department will soon issue notices to those who have deposited “suspicious” amounts of money in banks post-demonetisation and have not responded to taxman's preliminary communication, CBDT said on Tuesday.

Sushil Chandra, chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), said despite closing of I-T returns filing time period, a number of entities and individuals failed to file their tax returns, as required under the ‘Operation Clean Money’ (OCM) initiated by the government to check black money post demonetisation.

“The government has already taken all measures under the Operation Clean Money. We have given enough time to people to file their returns and come out clean,” he said. “But we have found that even after the last date of returns, a large number of persons have not filed the same,” Chandra said.

LENS ON PROFILES OF PROPERTIES

The Income Tax Department is matching the “tax profiles” of all property registrations of above ?30 lakh under the provisions of the anti-Benami Act, as action against illicit asset holders is set to intensify, the CBDT chief said.

CBDT chairman Sushil Chandra said the taxman is also investigating those shell companies and their directors whose operations were recently “debarred”. Chandra said that till now, the taxman has attached 621 properties, including some bank accounts, and the total amount involved in these cases, being probed under the Benami Transactions Act, is about ?1,800 crore.

“We will destroy all instruments that are used to convert black money into white. This also includes shell companies. Also, the department is checking the income tax profiles of all properties which have a registry value of over ?30 lakh. “We get this information under the law. If these profiles are found suspicious or incorrect, action will be taken (under the Benami Act),” Chandra said.

CONFIDENT I-T DEPT WILL GO PAST COLLECTION TARGET: CBDT

CBDT said it was not only confident that the Income Tax Department would achieve the direct tax collection target for the current financial year, but that it would go past it. “The collections (under the income tax, personal tax and other direct tax categories) have been buoyant and very good. I’m very happy to say that the net growth of collections is about 15.2% at the moment and I would say that the individual assessees under the advance tax category have responded very well,” Chandra said.

The Economic Times, New Delhi, 15th November 2017