Rs 2,700 crore declared as black money in region, Punjab leads

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 3

Undisclosed assets worth at least Rs 2,700 crore were declared in the one-time compliance window of the Income Tax Department i.e IDS-2016 in the North-West Region comprising the states of Haryana, UT of Chandigarh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. The disclosures will yield around Rs 1,215 crore in taxes to the government exchequer.

According to senior officials, maximum disclosures were from Punjab (Rs 1,300 crore), followed by Haryana (Rs 800 crore), Jammu and Kashmir (Rs 250 crore), Chandigarh (Rs 200 crore) and Himachal Pradesh (Rs 150 crore).

Further, the maximum disclosures in Punjab were from industrial cities like Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar.

According to sources in the Income Tax Department, around 10,000 declarants disclosed an amount of Rs 2,700 crore. More than 50% of the declarants turned up in the last week of September with 22% of them making their submission on the last day of the scheme i.e September 30.

To facilitate the individuals, the counters for receiving the declarations under the IDS, 2016 were open till the midnight of September 30, in all jurisdictions. In addition to this, people also filed their undisclosed income online.

On being asked about the performance of the scheme in northwestern region, Rajendra Kumar, Principal Chief Commissioner, Income Tax, North-West Region said, “We are satisfied with the disclosures made by the declarants. People came forward to declare their undisclosed assets, which is possible only through wide publicity of the scheme by the department. We also tried to clear the doubts of the people by organising seminars.”

He said since the undisclosed income was to be paid in instalments, many of the individuals got an ample time to deposit the money. The amount of tax payable under the Scheme can be paid in three instalments by September 30, 2017. The first instalment of 25% will have to be paid by November 2016 to be followed by another of 25% by March 31, 2017.

The undisclosed income declared under the scheme shall be chargeable to tax @ 45% of such income (30% tax + 7.5% Krishi Kalyan cess + 7.5% penalty).

Earlier, the the Income Tax Department (North-West) region had issued 60,000 notices for large non-PAN transactions.

Nationally, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had received total disclosures of Rs 65,250 crore under the Income Disclosure Scheme, 2016 in the form of cash and other assets.