Income Tax Department Investigating Illegal ITR Filing

Resham Aswani (Ex-Employee)

6 years ago

The Income Tax department has highlighted the fact that people are showing bogus documents to claim ITR falsely and also there is an increment in cases where people are displaying less income then what they actually earned to evade tax. Last three years have witnessed the hike of such cases so the inspection against them has been initiated by the Income Tax department.

The issue was taken to Parliament while the Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla pronounced that there has been a rise in the number of these distrustful cases. The number of suspected refund claims for the investigation was 20,874 in 2018-19, 11,059 in 2017-18 and 9,856 in the year 2016-17. He also added that Investigation has been commenced against taxpayers who claim big refunds which are conflicting with income and investment methods. He informed that after the investigation, false claims of the refund will be unsustained and legal action of the prosecution will be taken against them based on the seriousness of the matter.

During the year 2018-19 (till February 2, 2019), the total amount of income tax refund was Rs 1.43 lakh crore, in 2017-18 (Rs 1.51 lakh crore), in the year 2016-17 (1.62 lakh crore) and the year 2015- 16 (1.22 lakh crores).

In a separate reply, the minister said that till January 2019, the number of income tax return (ITR) registered in January 2019 was 6.36 crore. It showcases an addition of more than 37% compared to the number of 4.63 million ITRs filed during the same period of 2017-18.
He said, “In the year 2018-19, about 25 crore SMSes and e-mails were sent to taxpayers, as a reminder to deposit their income tax returns on time. Apart from this, notices were also given in the newspapers with references to the submission of ITRs.

To discourage the last-minute filing of returns, a provision has been prepared to charge up to Rs 10,000 on late filing of ITR in the year 2017-18.

He has also alarmed field officers to take necessary precautions before accepting the big ITR claims. He highlighted the ITRs filed during this year:

2016-17 – 5.57 crores
2017-18 – 6.86 crores
2018-19 – 6.36 crores

While the direct tax collection was 8.49 lakh crore rupees, which increased by 18% in 2017-18 & reached to Rs 10.02 lakh crore. Income tax collection of 7.89 lakh crore rupees (up to January 2019) increased by 13.4 percent as compared to last year.