I-T dept detects Rs 13,715 crore undisclosed income last fiscal

New Delhi: The income tax department detected undisclosed income of Rs 13,715 crore through surveys in 2016 -17, Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said on Tuesday.

Also, as many as 1.26 crore new taxpayers were added last fiscal, he said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

Last fiscal, the income tax department conducted searches at 5,102 premises of 1,152 groups during which undisclosed income of Rs 15,496 crore was admitted.

"During the same period, 12,526 surveys led to detection of undisclosed income of Rs 13,715 crore," Gangwar said.

He said a total of 1.96 crore income tax returns were filed between November 9, 2016, to March 31, 2017, compared with 1.63 crore returns filed during the same period of 2015- 16.

In a separate reply, Gangwar said that during phase one of 'Operation Clean Money' launched on January 31, about 18 lakh persons were identified whose cash transactions did not match their tax profiles.

More than 9.27 lakh responses were received giving information on 13.33 lakh accounts, involving cash deposits of around Rs 2.89 lakh crore, he said.

To fight the menace of black money, the government had on November 8, 2016, demonetised old 500 and 1,000 rupee notes and asked holders of such notes to deposit the same in bank accounts.

The I-T department had then launched Operation Clean Money to clamp down on unaccounted money funnelled into bank accounts, post demonetisation.

In phase two, launched in May, the tax department had undertaken a rule-based comprehensive risk assessment framework to classify cases with different levels of risk.

As per the classification, one lakh people were identified under the 'high risk' category, 7.54 lakh under 'medium risk', 5.95 lakh under 'low risk' and 3.41 lakh under 'very low risk', Gangwar said.