The Income Tax Separtment has a new weapon in its arsenal to identify evaders — the database of the Credit Information Bureau of India.
Set up by the State Bank of India along with several other banks and non-banking finance companies, the credit information bureau maintains records of individual payments pertaining to loans and credits.
The IT department will now use the bureau’s extensive database for high value recoveries from tax evaders. The credit information bureau will help the IT department recover a part of the Rs 478,863 crore tax that various entities owe the Department. The funds are locked up in disputes and litigations.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes, in its internal document called Central Action Plan for fiscal 2012-13, has reiterated the importance of the credit information bureau in the recovery process and has said it is one of the means to enforce recovery from defaulters.
CIBIL’s database contains PAN-wise records of loans taken by entities from banks and financial institutions. CIBIL also assigns credit scores to borrowers depending on factors like repayment pattern, defaults and loans availed by them.
Using the CIBIL database would help the IT department to move effectively given the extensive details of loans and credit taken by different entities. Since the CIBIL database also contains information about the credit rating of such entities, this would also help in ascertaining the financial capability of the PAN holders against whom the tax demand has been raised by the Department.
Keywords: Income Tax Separtment, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Central Action Plan, Credit Information Bureau of India.
Comments:
This is a good move on the part of the IT department. Along with this,the IT department can also have some way to collect information on large transactions particularly using cash in the bullion markets where only cash payments are accepted and that too without any proper receipt, real esate deals through brokers,real estate agents, builders and developers, registras of lands and properties. The IT dept can also think of calling for data from IT payers through Income Tax return or otherwise the details of their assets and liabilities and large payments and receipts. The tax returns need to be modified a little to get this information compulsorily.Objections can come from only tax evaders. Honest tax payers will be happy to cooperate with the Dept as they have nothing to hide.
Seems like CIBIL database will be used for tracking IT evaders. I wonder
if IT dept. has access to the CIBIL database?
Satyam
www.creditvidya.com
Please Email the Editor