You had better pay tax on the undisclosed income or get caught by the powerful IT sniffing tools. Please volunteer to declare the hidden income and pay 45 per cent tax before we catch you, says the Income Tax Department.
As it launched a nationwide community reach-out programme, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) says it has gathered information on millions of transactions, including that involve people with no PAN card, that were hidden from the Income Tax department.
With over 22,000 employees added to the workforce in recent years, the Income Tax department says it is now equipped to handle the information it gathered over a period of time using IT solutions. The department claims that it has information of financial transactions of people who do not have PAN cards.
Top IT officials have been asked to convene meetings, inviting high net-worth individuals and representatives of business establishments to spread the word on the IDS-2016. A gathering of local tax payers was convened on Monday to clear their doubts on the scheme.
Good response “The response from tax payers has been tremendous ever since the scheme came into force in June. Similar reach-out programmes are being held in smaller towns to clear doubts on the scheme,” Amisha Gupt, Additional Commissioner of IT (Range-1, Hyderabad), told Business Line .
IT officials contended that the tax rate of 45 per cent is not high. “You anyway pay tax at 30 per cent (the normal IT rate for HNIs). You add a surcharge and penalty to make it 45 per cent,” IT official Murali Krishna said.
He said the information declared would be kept confidential and no proceedings would be taken up by the department.