Just a week before the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS) 2016 comes to a close, Income Tax department here on Friday announced that the last week of the scheme is crucial for the people who have undisclosed money in their closets, especially the people holding Benami assets. To facilitate more and more declarants, the department has announced to open its windows till midnight on September 30.
Addressing a Press conference in Chandigarh, Principal Chief Commissioner, Income Tax, North West region, Rajendra Kumar said that the disclosures of unaccounted income under IDS-2016 picked up in the month of August and the department was expecting a healthy response to the scheme.
Sending a warning to the holders of black money, Kumar said that the computerization had brought great changes in the procedure of scrutiny of accounts. The Income Tax authorities had been keeping a constant watch on the transactions of people and the number of prosecution filed by the department had been going up year after year, he added.
To address the concerns of the stakeholders, he said, the information in respect of a valid declaration would be kept confidential and would not be shared with any law enforcing agency. The declarations would not be even enquired into by the Income Tax department, he added.
He said that the banks will accept cash deposits of any account under the IDS and Reserve Bank had issued special circular in this respect.
He said that declarations could also be filed with the CIT, Centralized Processing Centre, Bengaluru and the same would not even be shared with the jurisdictional Principal Commissioner to ensure confidentiality.
He said that the scheme was a good opportunity for the people with Benaami assets, as the government was expected to start taking over Benaami properties in the times to come and in such a case, the Benaami property holders would face 7 years imprisonment also.
Talking about the number of Income Tax assesses in the region, he said that there are 36 lac Income tax payers in the North-West region right now and in the 2015-16, 6 lac new Income Tax assesses’ were added in the lists of payees.
He said that on the basis of transactions without PAN numbers, around 60 thousand letters had been issued by the department and the investigation wing will look into the outcome of these letters further. He said that keeping in mind the closure of the scheme, Central government had extended the date of submission of audited accounts of the companies to O1ctober 17, which is generally September 30 every year.
Terming the scheme to be quite attractive to disclose the unaccounted assets, Ajay Singh, Chief Commissioner, IT, Amritsar said that the module of the scheme had surprise concessions for the declarants. Explaining the concessions, he said that the declarants had to pay 45 percent of their undisclosed income after the disclosure under the scheme, but the scheme allows payment of tax in three installments and due to this facility, the effective rate of tax would come down to 38 percent approx.
Director, Income Tax (Intelligence and Criminal investigation) G K Dhall said that the department keeps a vigil on all the transactions above 10 lac and cash purchases of above two lacs.