In the second phase of Operation Clean Money, over 550,000 people who deposited cash during the demonetisation drive, will get a call from the income tax department, while another 100,000 people are on the radar of tax officials for not disclosing all their bank accounts. A senior Central Board of Direct Taxes official said, “Fresh set of data of suspicious transactions has come to us. We have begun sending out emails and SMSs to over 550,000 individuals whose tax profile was not consistent with the deposits made.”
Income tax authorities rely on data analytics to identify high-risk clusters, shell companies and benami assets. The department also identified over 100,000 individuals who did not disclose all their bank accounts when questioned in the first phase of the drive. The IT department has identified 1792,000 people in the first phase of which 972,000 had submitted online responses. It had uploaded details of information about these deposits on the e-filing window of the PAN-holder on its website. Cash deposits made of over Rs 200,000 during demonetisation have to be disclosed in income tax returns this year. Currently, the 650,000 people have to submit online explanations without having to visit income tax offices as yet.
The IT will match this information with the details to see if there is any misreporting. The government had also given people one last opportunity to come clean, allowing them to declare unaccounted cash under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, 2016. Those making a declaration had to pay a total tax and penalty of 50 per cent and deposit 25 per cent of amount disclosed in non-interest bearing deposit for four years. The total amount declared under the scheme was £500 million.
