New Delhi: An informant who tips off the Central Board of Direct Taxes about hidden stashes of black money or assets will be rewarded with a sum of up to Rs 5 crore.
The Income Tax Informants Rewards Scheme 2018, which came into effect on Tuesday, further assures an even higher prize if the information is about undisclosed foreign assets under the Black Money Act of 2015.
The scheme also applies on specific and credible information on tax evasion and benami (proxy) transactions.
According to officials, both an interim award and a final one will be granted to informants if their information leads to a tax discovery. The reward money is 10 per cent of taxes levied and the maximum cap for this is a massive Rs 5 crore.
According to guidelines issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes on August 28, 2015, an informer used to get Rs 1 lakh as an instant reward if the tip-off leads to tax recovery. The rest of the reward money – 10% of the total tax liability with a maximum cap of Rs 15 lakh – was subject to the final settlement of the case.
Many Income Tax officials believe that a strong network of informers could help uncover more benami properties. “Informants will not come forward to provide information on properties worth several crores when the incentive is so meagre and the process so complicated,” said a tax investigator.
According to a government release on January 11, 2018, “the Income Tax department has made a provisional attachment in more than 900 cases of properties under the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, which came into force on November 1, 2016.”
“These attachments include plots of land, flats, shops, jewellery, vehicles, deposits in bank accounts, fixed deposits, etc. The value of properties under attachment is more than Rs 3,500 crore, inclusive of immovable properties of over Rs 2,900 acrore,” the release said.