Nearly 14,000 property transactions of over Rs 1 crore have come under the scanner of the Income Tax (I-T) department. These are the transactions where I-T returns were not filed by the owners.
The I-T department is currently investigating a large number of suspicious transactions along with the property transaction cases, the Times of India reported.
The report suggests that post-demonetisation, the government took a number of actions to crack down on black money. Now the I-T department has launched 'Operation Clean Money' and is working to track down evaders using data analytics.
"The scale of the operation may be gauged from the fact that the response of 9.72 lakh people in respect of 13.33 lakh accounts involving cash deposits of around Rs 2.89 lakh crore, as per pre-determined parameters on sources of the cash deposits was captured by the income tax department within a short span of three to four weeks," TOI quoted the tax department as saying.
Earlier in July, the I-T department detected over Rs 19,000 crore in black money following investigations into global leaks, including HSBC account holders in Switzerland.
Post the note ban exercise, the department reportedly found undisclosed income amounting to over Rs 5,400 crore through hundreds of search operations.
The department has adopted a three-prong strategy to operate in the next phase of investigations, which includes enforcement actions in high-risk cases, engagement with taxpayers through a dedicated website in medium-risk cases, and lastly, monitor taxpayers in low-risk cases.
"The high, medium and low-risk cases have been identified through the use of advanced data analytics, including integration of data sources, relationship clustering and fund-tracking," the daily quoted the tax department.
The tax authority has become more vigilant following the demonetisation exercise and stepped up searches and surveys. There has been an increase of 158 percent in the number of searches, 106 percent in seizures, and 38 percent in admission of undisclosed income after the note ban exercise of November 8. The income tax department witnessed an increase of 183 percent in surveys, along with a spurt of 44 percent in the scale of undisclosed income.
The capital market regulator teamed up with the the income tax department to investigate the role of brokerages, which possibly helped shell companies launder money in 331 shell companies.
