Advent of technology has brought in more transparency and openness to the tax compliance regime in the country, said Union finance minister Arun Jaitley
Addressing a seminar meet on Income Declaration Scheme (IDS) 2016 sponsored by ICAI, FICCI, FKCCI and in partnership with Department of Income Tax in Bengaluru, Jaitley said “Thanks to information technology (IT), news leaks globally via cases related to HSBC, Liechtenstein and now Panama we are getting more info and data to go behind tax evaders.”
“In future, it will be difficult to go scot-free. Through global deals we are creating a consensus among G-20 countries for information sharing,” he added.
Through various global treaties, India is in a position to get information on real-time on remittances. “As a result of the FATCA agreement signed with the US will be of use for us.”
Technology
In India we have begun to use technology to detect tax evader, government is planning to investigate transactions with regard to PAN disclosures. “We have been able to capture numerous PAN transactions data where in tax returns are not filed.”
Jaitly further said with the coming up of Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, every stage of business transactions is going to get recorded. Detecting violations will be easier for the taxmen.
Online tax payment
He said the personal contact between the income tax (I-T) department and the assesses has come down drastically with various reforms being initiated by the ministry and department (I-T) such as online filing of returns, online answering of queries, online orders and online refunds.
According to Jailty nearly 95 per cent of taxes are now paid though online. A total of 1.34 lakh crore individuals received tax returns last year.
Comparing VDS of 1997 and IDS 2016, Jaitly said “we are of firm belief that we want to punt an end to the mindset of the assesses which makes him believe that he can evade the payment of taxes.
“That's why IDS is a part of that strategy where we want people to come clean,” he explained.
He further said IDS provides people who have not paid full taxes in the past to come forward and declare their undisclosed income and pay surcharge and penalty. The scheme which opened on June 1 is open till September 30.
Those declaring in IDS will have to pay 25 per cent of tax and penalty on income declared by November, another 25 per cent by March 2017, and the remaining by September 2017.