Nagpur: Income tax (I-T) department has sent notices to 800 individuals for allegedly hiding assets and income worth more than 3,000 crore. The department has come across cases of gross underreporting of actual income as compared to tax returns filed. Taxmen have come across cases where an assessee reported annual income of 10 lakh in returns, but receipts ran up to 100 crore, said a source. In some cases, assets ranging from bank deposits, to even cryptocurrency have been skipped from returns. There are cases where returns claiming nil income have been filed, but earnings worth 20-25cr were found on basis of receipts in bank accounts, other assets held.The transactions were not in cash and the funds remained in the banking channel. Even payment for purchasing assets happened through banks. However, the deals were simply not reported in returns. This was caught through scrutiny of statement of financial transactions (SFT) — a cross-verification mechanism of the department.This precedes action by taxmen against property registrar offices, banks, and even hospitals for non-filing of SFT, which is a list of high-value transactions that have to be reported to the department by these entities. A thorough scrutiny of the SFTs that were filed after the income tax action threw up the mismatches as against the transactions undertaken by the individuals. In some cases, business receipts to the tune of 1,000 crore were not reported at all. Even cash deposits in banks worth 850 crore and withdrawals of 500 crore were unearthed, but the concerned individuals simply omitted from returns the income earned through these sums, a source said. Fixed deposits of 100 crore also remain tucked away, even purchase of luxury vehicles worth 15 crore or cryptocurrency valued at 20 crore were not disclosed by the holders in their returns. The value of such undisclosed real estate assets comes to 250 crore, said a source.
