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No longer safe to deal with excessive cash and evade tax, warns Finance Minister Arun Jaitley

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 5/16/2017 7:41:49 PM

The finance minister said as many as 91 lakh persons have come under the tax net as unaccounted cash lost anonymity in the wake of note ban.

Sending a stern message to tax evaders, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said that it is no longer safe to deal with excessive cash and tax evaded money. He also said as many as 91 lakh persons have come under the tax net as unaccounted cash lost anonymity in the wake of demonetisation.
While launching an online portal, “Operation Clean Money”, as part of the government’s crackdown against black money, the finance minister stated that personal income tax filing has gone up after demonetisation due to ownership of unanimous money being identified.
Designed by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the online portal will identify those who have made large cash deposits during 9th November to 30th December 2016. As per a press release by the Ministry of Finance, “In the first batch, around 18 lakh persons have been identified in whose case, cash transactions do not appear to be in line with the tax payer’s profile.”
“Income Tax Department has enabled online verification of these transactions to reduce compliance cost for the taxpayers while optimising its resources. The information in respect of these cases is being made available in the e-filing window of the PAN holder (after log in) at the portal http://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in. The PAN holder can view the information using the link “Cash Transactions 2016” under “Compliance” section of the portal. The taxpayer will be able to submit online explanation without any need to visit Income Tax office,” the release read.
Further, email and sms will be sent to the taxpayers for submitting online response on the e-filing portal. With an aim to assist the taxpayer in submitting online response, a detailed user guide and quick reference guide have been made available on the portal.
“The response of taxpayer will be assessed against available information. In case explanation of source of cash is found justified, the verification will be closed without any need to visit Income Tax Office. The verification will also be closed if the cash deposit is declared under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojna,” the release said, adding that the taxpayers covered in this phase need to submit their response on the portal within 10 days in order to avoid any notice from the ITD and enforcement actions under the Income-tax Act.
Meanwhile, CBDT chairman Sushil Chandra disclosed some staggering figures, saying 91 lakh new taxpayers have been added post demonetisation while over 30 crore PANs have been allocated. He added that undisclosed income of Rs 16,398 crore have been detected after the demonetisation move.”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,” Chandra said.
With PTI inputs