The Union government is all set to launch the integrated tax mapping to plug the revenue leakage and to stamp out money laundering. For this purpose, the government has given a clearance to the Income Tax department to apply the method in practice. The IT department may now map the profiles of individual taxpayers to take their tax data in record.

According to a senior official from Finance Ministry, the Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram has given clearance to the Income tax department to draft 360-degree profiling method for full mapping of the individual taxpayers.

The IT department may collect the necessary data from different sources such as annual information returns (AIRs) from banks, credit cards, mutual funds, stock market and property registrars.

The government may keep the eye on the surveillance of phones; verification of spending on credit cards, mutual funds, stock market and property registrars and collating information about excise, customs, service and income tax payment to make sure the better tax assessment of the corporate as well as individuals.

However, the CBDT has different words to say in this matter and it says that this is not the method of complete profiling. The income tax department will profile individual taxpayers only if it would receive information regarding huge tax evasion.

CBDT chairman BM Singh said:

IT profiling is a ’standard device’ adopted as an anti-tax evasion measure. The tax officials would examine the data collected from AIRs. They would take action if they sense any default. There would be no any surveillance on individual taxpayers.

Director General Income Tax (Investigation) Delhi, SS Khan said that the 360-degree profiling method means the data collecting exercise to put together the information from various sources such as AIRs, credit cards for scrutiny of the tax payment.

Moreover, the I-T department has also planned to establish a huge data bank to have detail information on potential tax evading individuals and corporate houses. The government has already set up 15 CIBs offices in different parts of the country in an exercise to expand its net to cover all state capitals.

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