I-T Dept to give SEBI data of taxpayers for fraud probe

The Income-Tax Department will share all taxpayers’ data, such as PAN information, with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in order to help the capital market regulator in its probe against various entities, including those involved in ‘stock market manipulation’, an official order has said.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), which frames policy for the Tax Department, had issued an order in this context on February 10 under Section 138 (1) of the I-T Act.

The sharing of information will be under three broad heads: Request-based exchange of data, suo motu, and automatic.

The two organisations are expected to ink a memorandum of understanding (MoU) soon in this regard and chalk out the modalities of exchange of data, maintenance of confidentiality, mechanism for safe preservation of data and weeding out after usage.

The CBDT said under the suo motu mode, information such as list of scrutiny cases marked ‘evasion’ or ‘violation related to stock market manipulation’ and any other information considered necessary for SEBI will be provided.

Under the request-based exchange, the order said, the Tax Department will share all PAN information. Name and PAN of partners in partnership firms and LLPs, KYC information in I-T returns, IP address on the acknowledgement of the filed I-T returns, financial particulars of the business, as filed in ITR and tax audit report, including income from trading in securities, will also be provided.

Under the automatic route, information in Form 61 (declaration filed by a person having only agricultural income) will be providedby the taxman.