Hyderabad: The startling disclosure of Rs 10,000 crore of undeclared income under the Centre’s Income Disclosure Scheme (IDS) made by an unidentified individual in Hyderabad has turned out to be false. He did not have even Rs 1 crore, I-T department officials said.
This finding deals an embarrassing blow to the Centre’s claim of unearthing about Rs 65,000 crore of undeclared income through the voluntary IDS. It also calls into question the authenticity of other disclosures made under the scheme.
I-T department sources were not ready to disclose the details of the applicant, except for saying that it was a fake disclosure and the same had been conveyed to headquarters.
TRS Legislative Council member T. Bhanu Prasad, a builder, said, “The so-called disclosure by one individual of Rs 10,000 crore is nothing but a fake, I am told by income-tax department officials. They are keeping his identity secret.”
According to income-tax department sources, the individual runs a small business. His IDS application for Rs 10,000 crore was said to be the single largest amount declared under the scheme nationwide.
When I-T officers checked the veracity of the disclosure, they found that the trader made the startling declaration just to attract attention and did not have even Rs 1 crore.
Questions are now being asked whether the IDS was a ruse to convert black money to white. There are fears that those holding black money could approach IDS applicants to convert their stash into white by paying the 45 per cent penalty.
I-T department sources, however, say this is not possible as the details of the IDS-2016 applicants are secret, and they will keep a strict watch just as they did in the case of the errant trader.
The amnesty scheme, IDS-2016, ended on September 30 and the central government claimed that it had received disclosures from over 64,000 people across India for an amount of Rs 65,250 crore.
That figure will now fall to Rs 55,250 crore following the discovery of this fraudulent filing.
The first instalment of the penalty, amounting to 25 per cent, must be paid by the end of November. “We will come to know about the actual remittance of amounts by individuals by then,” an I-T department source said.
The announcement that one individual had declared Rs 10,000 crore in unpaid taxes had led to a furious exchange of allegations between the Telugu Desam and the YSRC in Andhra Pradesh.
AP minister Devineni Uma Maheshwara Rao and other prominent leaders of the Telugu Desam alleged that the person who had declared the sum was YSRC chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy. The YSRC in turn alleged that the declaration might be from Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and his son Nara Lokesh.
