The Investigation Wing of the Income Tax Department under the supervision of the Principal Director conducted investigations in 4 states Punjab, Jammu, Delhi and U.P. More than 10 locations were raided. During the raids, a new forgery came to light, in which during the investigation it was found that some leading accountants are jointly filing fake returns of government employees all over the country in lieu of getting income tax refunds. It contained information about chief accountants of other states including Punjab. For this, the team raided all places for 2 days.
Evidence of documents and digital records of mobiles, laptops and other devices found at their locations during the raid. They are being investigated. According to the information received from the sources, the Income Tax Department has detected huge tax evasion by claiming fake exemptions and deductions by these tax defaulters. Sources said that the method being adopted by the fraudsters is using lakhs of e-mail IDs and contact numbers to file Income Tax Returns (ITR) of tax applicants and claiming fake refunds by declaring huge deductions and exemptions under Sections 10 and 80 of the Income Tax Act and without any proof.
Apart from this, they were also taking a commission of 5 to 10 percent of the refund amount and generally the refund amount received by the taxpayers. The amount of said commission was being taken by them through bank channels or in cash. In most cases, full refund of TDS was claimed. As a result, there was a significant loss to the government exchequer. The total number of such income tax returns is more than 1 lakh and this number is increasing day by day. Because the department is still investigating. The investigation started on Wednesday at the houses and other places of these persons and continued until late Thursday night.
