New Delhi: The Income Tax Department has shifted its focus from revenue augmentation to prosecution of willful tax evaders.
Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Thursday confirmed that the I-T Department has started focusing on nabbing those who escape tax scanner, which is a comparatively more serious offence.
Till now the department only treated disclosure of unaccounted income as civil proceedings and would exempt tax evaders if they paid the tax however, in the wake of black money row fully flamed the government might change its course of action.
“In its crusade against black money and with a view to have credible deterrence against generation of black money, the government has shifted the focus to successfully prosecute the offenders in shortest possible time,” A CBDT press note said.
In the current financial year, up to December, prosecution of 628 individuals and companies have been filed by the I-T Department.
CBDT confirmed that out of these, around 56 complaints were related to offences concerning undisclosed foreign income.
Although, the total income admitted by the tax evaders, undisclosed to the I-T Department, is more than Rs 6700 crore, due to this change of focus, around Rs 580 crore has been seized by the department in the last eight months.
The department has reportedly detected undisclosed income of over Rs 4,673 during 1,100 surveys on entities.
