The demonetization drive which was launched last year on 8th November drew a lot of attention from the globe and praised the man behind it, Mr. Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India and the person who courageously shredded away high value 500 and 1000 rupees currency notes in order to curb black money. The black money was said to be stashed in cash with tax evaders from a long time and the time came the government instantly brought the value of those currency notes to zero.
Now after long six months elapsed, the government is proud of the decision it took a month ago for the improvement of the economic condition of the country. As mentioned by the union finance minister Arun Jaitley, there are about 91 lakhs taxpayers who have been added to the list after the November. Earlier the figure was near 5 crores which have now seen a significant increase, including the daily allocation of PAN number to 2-3 lakhs per day which was earlier one lakh per day.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that “It’s time of reckoning for those who evade tax. We want to change habit from non-tax compliant to tax compliant.” He also mentioned about the newly launched website by the finance ministry based on ‘Operation clean money’ which is intended to bring the illegal wealth into the mainstream.
He focused that there are around 18 lakh individuals which have been identified by a special analytical tool processed over the banking transactions post demonetization and found out that they, “do not appear to be in line with the tax payer’s cash profile.” He also added that “Post demonetization, there has been a hike in the collection of personal income tax, the new portal will help honest tax payer”.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chairman Sushil Chandra also mentioned that there has been an increase of 22 percent in e-filed returns post demonetization, and said that about 17.92 lakh individuals were tracked for unexplained deposits after notes ban movement, and the tax department has sorted out one lakh suspicious tax evading cases. He also said that, an undisclosed income of Rs. 16,398 crore was tracked post demonetization.
Mr. Chandra also said that “We identified around 17.92 lakh persons in whose case the cash transactions did not appear in line with the taxpayers’ profiles. And online verifications of these transactions are underway.”
According to the officials, the newly released tax portal which is designed by CBDT will help in identifying those individuals who have made huge purchases or deposits and the outcome of this money was not known clearly. The portal was praised by the finance minister, Mr. Jaitley, and he said that it will make ease for compliant stick taxpayers and will make things hard for those individuals or to say tax evaders who are non-complaint.
There are some steps by which the new portal will walk though and will help in tracking down the tax evaders.
The phase one of “Operation Clean Money” was launched soon after the note ban against those with undeclared income and are suspected of having black money.
While the main focus of phase two of ‘Operation Clean Money’ will be especially on high-risk individuals suspected to be tax evaders. There are approximately 60 thousand such cases as declared by the Income Tax Department and it is speculated that they will face hardest possible action.
According to the transactions which were being tracked, individual taxpayers will be categorized into different slabs of the risk levels as the cases for validation will stand upon on approved risk criteria which will be selected via data analytics tools. If a case has been chosen for the verification, all the request for supporting information and its reply will be communicated by the means of online.
Individuals/groups to be divided into 4 major categories viz High risk, medium risk, low risk and very low risk. High-risk individual/groups to face enforcement action against them like search, seizure and direct interrogations while the Medium risk individuals/groups will be communicated by SMS/email to take reformative measures. Low and very low-risk individuals/groups will remain under surveillance.
The government has cleared that the names of those individuals behind the suspicious transactions will not be available on the portal. As mentioned by a senior finance ministry source, “Naming can be a problem. A transaction initially may look suspect. Naming will mean condemning a person publicly even before he or she has been given a chance to clarify”.
The CBTD’s online verification of transactions is targeted for lowering the cost of compliance for the taxpayers. Detailed information will be available in the e-filing window of the PAN holder and taxpayers who are not yet registered on the e-tax filing portal should register by clicking on the ‘Register Yourself’ link’.
The information and notifications or any news related to the agenda on the online portal will be revised every then and now as new information and response floats in through reliable sources.
A pan holder can click the link “Cash Transactions 2016” under “Compliance” section of the portal and add explanation online about transactions which strike the need for visiting the tax office on a personal level and also the taxpayers will be informed by e-mail and SMS for submitting an online response on the e-filing portal.
