The income tax department has warned that tax evaders should not try to pass on their black money as income while filing tax returns for the current fiscal in order to escape payment of penalty under the Income Disclosure Scheme.
“Declaration of undisclosed income and assets as current income for Assessment Year 2017-18 would attract prosecution for false verification and also cannot explain acquisition of undisclosed assets in the past years,” said the Central Board of Direct Taxes on Thursday, adding that its new data-mining programme provides “pin-pointed information” about transactions by taxpayers and their timing.
The clarification is part of a new set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) released by the CBDT to clarify doubts relating to the new compliance window for domestic black money.
It follows a meeting of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with representatives of trade, industry associations and professional bodies earlier this week where they had raised several questions.
The Income Declaration Scheme provides a four-month compliance window between June 1 and September 30 for people with undisclosed income in the country to come clean by paying tax, penalty and surcharge of 45 per cent of fair market value.
“The FAQs provides clarifications on issues such as confidentiality of information disclosed in the declaration, allowability of TDS credit against declared income, enquiry in respect source of income and payment of tax and initiation of enquiry against third parties on the basis of information furnished in the declaration,” said the CBDT.