Govt tightens noose around tax defaulters

New Delhi: The government has amended rules and empowered the taxman to use banking, insurance and civic corporation’s database to obtain address of a “hiding” or an “untraceable” income-tax defaulter for issuance of noti-ces or to them and extract due taxes.

Till now, tax authorities could only issue notice to a defaulting or taxpayer as per the address provided by them in their PAN or any tax-related communication. This was not helping I-T authorities if the assessee changed their address or went into hiding to evade due taxes.