Income Tax nets Rs 5,259 crore in Karnataka raids

The income-tax department has conducted as many as 50 searches, unearthing unaccounted for income of Rs 5,259 crore in the 2018 financial year. Some of the major search operations include properties of Karnataka energy minister DK Shivakumar and former Karnataka chief minister SM Krishna’s son-in-law VG Siddhartha, who owns the cafe chain Cafe Coffee Day.

Rajnish Kumar, principal chief commissioner of Income Tax, Karnataka and Goa, said the department would launch massive survey operations to unearth undisclosed income and particularly those who have not filed returns of income. “More than 600 surveys have been carried out in the Karnataka and Goa region,” he said.

The Karnataka and Goa region, which is the third-highest contributor of Income Tax revenue in the country after Mumbai and Delhi, is all set to cross Rs 1 lakh crore net collection in this fiscal year.


“We have collected Rs 98,000 crore and are confident that we will cross the Rs 1 lakh crore mark by end of this month. Last financial year, the net collection stood atRs 87,500 crore,” Kumar told reporters on Thursday.

“We are rigorously following up cases of cash deposits of high denomination currency after demonetisation. There are 21,628 cases where deposits of more than Rs 10 lakh were made without filing returns of income. About 570 people have deposited more than one crore. The department has issued notice to all of them. We are after them,” the principal chief commissioner of I-T, added.

FIRST ARREST
On Wednesday, the Tax Recovery Officer of Income Tax department arrested a person for failing to pay the self-assessment tax of Rs 16.45 lakh. “It is the first time in Karnataka that the arrest powers conferred with the Income Tax department have been used after a long period of time,” Balakrishna BR, DGIT (Investigation) said, in a press note.