On Wednesday the IT department cautioned salaried taxpayers not to under-report income or inflate deductions while filing their returns. It also said that violators will be reprimanded and tough action will be taken on them by their employers
The department said that evading and underreporting income with inflating deduction attempts “aided and abetted by unscrupulous intermediaries have been noted with concern”.
“Such offenses are punishable under various penal and prosecution provisions of the Income Tax Act,” it said.
The advice comes in the rake of investigations in January which unearthed a racket of extracting fraudulent tax refunds by employees of bellwether information technology companies.
The CBI recently registered a criminal case to probe this scandal and unearth the nexus.
For the Salaried class, the tax filing season has just started with the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), that frames policy for the department, recently notifying the new ITRs.
The one-page advisory added that if the department notices any fraudulent claims in their ITRs, such claims “may be punishable under provisions of the IT Act and this may also delay issuance of their refunds.”
It added “Taxpayers, are, therefore strictly advised not to fall prey to false promises or misadvice by unscrupulous intermediaries and submit wrong claims in their ITRs, which would be treated as cases of tax evasion. In the cases of such wrong claims by the government/PSU employees, reference would be made to the concerned vigilance division for action under conduct rules,”
The advisory added that the department possesses an “extensive risk analysis system” that is aimed at identifying persons who are non-compliant and aim to subvert the trust based-system “envisioned” while processing of ITRs at the CPC, which it said is automated and devoid of any human interface.
“In all such cases of high risk, the department may examine and verify the details submitted by taxpayers in their ITR subsequent to the processing of returns,” it said.
It also asked tax planners and advisors to “confine their advice to taxpayers within the four corners of the IT Act”
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