I-T dept shames defaulters, but most remain 

`untraceable'

New Delhi TIMES NEWS NETWORK





In its drive against tax defaulters, the income tax department published a full-page advertisement in newspapers on Saturday naming 29 individuals and companies, asking them to `pay tax arrears immediately'. Many of these entities are `not traceable' in the department's records or have no assets to recover. The total arrears against them amounts to around `448 crore.

It seems the biggest tax defaulters are yet to come on the radar of the department as the total tax arrears exceeded `8 lakh crore till 2015-16. In the current list of 29, the biggest tax defaulter is one Irfan Ahmed having arrears of `257 crore, while a few others have defaults of around `2-4 crore against their name. Ahmed, like most others in the list, is `not traceable'. His last address available with the department is Aminabad in Lucknow.

Interestingly , the I-T department had assessed Ahmed's income for four years from 2005-06 to 2008-09 to arrive at his tax obligation, but now it claims that it doesn't know his father's name or what business he operated. The department neither has his PAN number nor is aware of his “last known source of income“.

This is the second time that the department has published defaulters list in newspapers in an attempt to name and shame them.But, on both occasions, it had skipped naming defaulters with bigger arrears. A comptroller and auditor general (CAG) report, tabled in Parliament on March 10, shows total tax arrears is to the tune of `8.24 lakh crore, higher than the total direct tax collection of `7.48 lakh crore in 2015-16. The arrears increased from `7 lakh crore in 2014-15 to `8.24 lakh crore in 2015-16.

According to the CAG report, the I-T department had claimed that 97% of this demand is “difficult to recover“. The last time the department had carried out a similar exercise, it had named 67 entities with tax arrears.