The Income Tax Department on yesterday released a list of the tax defaulters owing to Rs. 490 crores taxes to the Exchequer. The list includes the details of twenty-four defaulting individuals and companies who had reported inadequate assets for payment of dues.
The department has issued the list and details of those defaulters in the national daily newspapers titled ‘List of defaulters of Income Tax and Corporate Tax‘. The Principal Director General of Income Tax in Delhi issued a notice to acknowledge those defaulters to pay tax immediately.
The listed defaulting firms come from the real estate, breweries and manufacture of ingots, food processing, bullion trading, software etc.
The public announcement of defaulting customers carries the identity of the firm or individual, their Permanent Account Number (PAN) and TAN number, Name of Directors and partners, their last known address and business profile, the amount of tax-defaulted, assessment year and the respective jurisdictional Income Tax authority.
The maximum tax due of a firm is Delhi-based Company called M/s Stock Guru, India and its partner Lokeshwar Dev having tax arrears of over 86.27 crores and the said notice reveals that the assessee has gone untraceable and also has inadequate assets to pay the income tax.
The notice also carried a disclaimer that the “entries in the list are specific to the tax arrears/assessment year mentioned and the tax defaulter’s address, business, shareholding, and management may have changed” now.
Also, the department has carried the practice of publishing the identity of defaulters over the last few years and which resulted in 96 such entities which have huge tax liabilities on them but they have either gone non-traceable or have shown no assets for recovery.
This practice of revelation would enable the department to get a timely payment of tax dues from the individual defaulters and the Firms.
