Tax dept identifies 90 lakh high-value deals; to seek details

Warning tax evaders that they own up high-value transactions, the Income Tax department today said it has identified 90 lakh such transactions carried out without quoting PAN and would issue as many as seven lakh letters seeking their details.
The high-value transaction trails were detected following the department's drive to bring to book maximum amount of black money during the one-time compliance window closing on September 30.
"The department has details of about 90 lakh such transactions for the period 2009-10 to 2016-17," a finance ministry statement said.
It said the tax department with the help of in-house computer techniques, grouped such non-PAN transactions and identified 7 lakh high-risk clusters having around 14 lakh non-PAN transactions and these are being "scrutinized" by the tax department closely.

"The department will be issuing letters to the parties of these transactions requesting them to provide their PAN number against these transactions," the ministry said.
The tax department has scrutinized the Annual Information Returns (AIR) for high value transactions which have divulged cash deposits of over Rs 10 lakh in a savings bank account, sale/purchase of immovable property valued at Rs 30 lakh or more, and many of these transactions do not have PAN linked to it.

Earlier this month, the tax department had asked its top officers to closely scrutinise high-value transactions to identify potential black money holders who can avail of the 4-month compliance window ending September 30 to come clean.

The parties can log-in to their e-filing website and by quoting a Unique Transaction Sequence Number provided in the letter sent to them, can link their transaction with their PAN easily, the ministry said.
They will also be able to give a response to this letter electronically by choosing the option of either owning up the transaction or denying the transaction as their own.
"The responses received from such parties online will be examined by the department. The Department will initiate further necessary action in those cases where no replies are received," it added.
Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia has been monitoring the progress of the ongoing four-month long Income Declaration Scheme (IDS) which opened on June 1. 25 per cent of tax and penalty on income declared is to be paid by November, another 25 per cent by March 2017, and the remaining by September 2017.

The Principal Chief Commissioners have also been asked to scrutinise "non-filers" and those who have not submitted their response to the tax authorities about non-filing of returns.
Further, to reduce interface with tax officials, the department has asked people who receive such letters to "cooperate" and use the departmental helpline to ask questions.
"Members of public are advised not to entertain any claims from unscrupulous elements who may offer their help in complying with such communication by falsely representing themselves to be the agents of Income Tax department in the matter," it added.
The Budget for 2016-17 announced a four-month compliance window, allowing domestic black money holders to declare their unaccounted wealth, by paying a tax and penalty of 45 per cent and escape prosecution and harsher punishment.