The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has refused to grant any relief to those black money declarants who failed to submit their first installment of tax and penalty under the IDS owing to personal emergencies or liquidity crunch.
The policy-making body of the Income Tax department made it clear that such condonation of delay in making payments by the deadline of November 30, 2016 RPT 2016 will be ‘discriminatory’ against those declarants of the Income Disclosure Scheme (IDS) who adhered to the deadline and paid the tax, surcharge and penalty on the stash declared by them.
The Board issued an order yesterday clarifying its position after some declarants who have paid (fully or partly) the first installment either belatedly, after November 30 last year, or have not yet made the payment, requested it to extend or provide relaxation in the due date.
“The board after considering the matter, is of the view that either condoning the delay in making payment of first installment by the defaulters who have not paid any amount till now or further extending the date beyond the due date for regulating/facilitating the payment of liabilities under IDS merely to accomodate a few, especially when most of the declarants had abided by the prescribed scheduled date, does not merit consideration.
“It is noted that IDS does not provide for levy of interest on delayed payments, and hence, granting such a condonation to the defaulters may be discriminatory against the declarants who made it a point to adhere to the prescribed time schedule,” the CBDT order said. It added that IDS declarants were ‘well aware of the payment schedule which they were required to follow’.
It added that the Government amply advertised the IDS scheme through media campaigns and awareness programmes and people choosing to come clean and declare their black money under the IDS were ‘suitably informed of the legal consequences arising from non-compliance of payment schedule’.