BENGALURU:For the first time in its history, the Income Tax Department-Karnataka Goa region is set to exceed Rs 1 lakh crore in net tax collection. The achievement comes 14 years after net tax collection of India touched the figure, according to Rajnish Kumar, Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax. As of March 22, he said that the total amount collected was Rs 98,000 crore, as against the total net tax collection figure of Rs 87,500 crore in the 2016-17 financial year.
Following demonetisation, 571 cases of deposits above Rs 1 crore and 21,628 cases of deposits above Rs 10 lakh to which tax returns have not been filed have been detected. The I-T department was after the defaulters. “Prosecution provisions were seldom used in the past. Now, we have started prosecuting individuals for tax evasion,” he said. The Department, he said, has been able to identify the defaulters due to the large amount of data collected from banks post demonetisation.
Surveys and searches
Rajnish Kumar said the Department had conducted 50 searches, in which tax evasion of D5,000cr has been detected. Recently, fish businesses were brought under the I-T net, as the firms were not paying taxes. Multiple raids were conducted. The purpose was not to harass the businesses, but to educate,” he said. Sanjay Kumar, Commissioner of IT (TDS) said there were multiple cases of individuals not remitting Tax Deducted at Source to the government. “We have carried out search at 570 entities and have identified defaults to the tune of D300 crore,” he said. Of the 570 surveys in K’taka-Goa region, 436 were in Karnataka.