Deposited Rs 10 lakh or above in banks post demonetisation? Taxmen are coming after you

Tax officials are going to question you if deposited Rs 10 lakh or above post demonetisation announcement. They are going to grill you over source of income.

India’s top tax authority, Central Board of Direct Taxes, has put in a new e-platform in which account holders who have deposited more than Rs 10 lakh will have to fill in their responses.

The step is being taken to bring in more transparency in the system. All officials have been briefed about suspicious cash deposits, mobilisation target from the new declaration scheme, and the way to go about in taxing undeclared income that have found its way into banks.

Post demonetisation, tax officials have recovered Rs 600 crore from various raids. Around 1.5 lakh account holders have deposited more than Rs 10 lakh each and there have been suspicious cash deposits in one crore accounts, belonging to 75 lakh people. Tax authorities believe that around Rs 1 lakh crore may be disclosed under the new income declaration scheme, which would result in tax collection of Rs 50,000 crore.

"As expected, the tax department is increasing its reliance on technology to mine the huge amount of data in its possession, post demonetisation. This move will enable the department to channelise its energy into high-risk cases and nab the tax evaders more efficiently. As the tax department joins the dots by deployment of big data analytics, we expect substantial increase in enquiries/searches and assessments by the tax office,” Amit Maheshwari, Partner Ashok Maheshwary & Associates LLP, told ET.

The income-tax department is using data analytical tools to scan personal bank deposits.