Taxmen on hunt for non-PAN transactions

The income-tax department on Thursday said that it will issue seven lakh letters seeking information in respect of high-value non-pan tran-sactions during 2009-10 to 2016-17 to check blackmoney generation.

The IT department under the annual information returns (AIR), gets information about various types of high-value transactions in the country from banks and others agencies.

These high-value transactions include reporting of cash deposits of Rs 10 lakh or more in a saving bank account, sale or purchase of immovable property valued at Rs 30 lakh or more among others. Many of these transactions do not have PAN linked to it.

The department has details of about 90 lakh such transactions for the period 2009-10 to 2016-17.

The income-tax department has with the help of in-house computer techniques, grouped such non-PAN transactions and identified seven lakh high-risk clusters having around 14 lakh non-PAN transactions which are being scrutinised by the income-tax department closely.

“The department will be issuing letters to the parties of these transactions requesting them to provide their PAN number against these transactions,” said the income-tax department in its statement.

For the convenience of the parties to whom these letters are addressed, a new functionality on e-filing portal has been developed wherein they can own up transactions and provide structured response electronically.

“The parties can log-in to their e-filing website and by quoting a Unique Transaction Sequence Number provided in the letter sent to them, can link their transaction with their PAN easily. They will also be able to give a response to this letter electronically by choosing the option of either owning up the transaction or denying the transaction as their own,” it said.

The responses received from such parties online will be examined by the tax officials.

The departnent will initiate further action.