Govt detects Rs 44k cr in undisclosed income

The government has detected nearly Rs 44,000 crore in undisclosed income since 2014, even as the Income Tax Department has signed a contract with private agency to track tax evaders.

Undisclosed income of Rs 43,829 crore, both from domestic and foreign sources, has been detected by the government in the last two financial years, Parliament was informed on Tuesday.

“The amount received under the one-time compliance window, as part of enforcement measures during the last two financial years, searches in 990 groups of assessees and surveys in 9,457 cases were conducted, resulting in detection of undisclosed income of Rs 43,829 crore,” Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

“An amount of Rs 2,476 crore was received as tax and penalty from 648 declarants under the said window,” he said.

Kumar said the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and imposition of Tax Act, 2015 enacted on May 26, 2015 provided a one-time compliance window for declaration of undisclosed foreign assets. The window was available from July 1, 2015 to September 30, 2015.

Meanwhile, the government has tied up with global IT solutions and service company L&T Finance for implementation of Project Insight that will play a key role in widening of tax-base and data mining to track tax evaders.

“The Project will be rolled out in three phases and the first phase is expected to go live in May 2017,” the finance ministry said on Tuesday.

“The new technical infrastructure will also be leveraged for implementation of Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act Inter Governmental Agreement (FATCA IGA) and Common Reporting Standard (CRS). Implementation of reporting compliance management system will ensure that the third party reporting by reporting entities is timely and accurate. A streamlined data exchange mechanism will also be set up with other government departments and exchange partners,” the ministry said in a statement.