Taxpayers with Facebook or Instagram accounts will have to have second thoughts before posting pictures of their new luxury car as the Income Tax department (I-T) will now track their social media accounts from next month in order to trace black money.
The I-T department will launch 'Project Insight' in October, which will use Big Data analytics to match information from social media sites to find out mismatches between spending patterns and income declarations to trace tax evasions and black money, the Economic Times has reported.
Earlier, the government had said that it is compulsory to link Aadhaar card with Permanent Account Number (PAN) which would allow the I-T department to have a complete view of a person's income and assets.
The government's crackdown on black money was spurred by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's demonetisation drive last year to fight corruption and wipe out black money from the economic system.
What is Project Insight?
The I-T department planned to implement Project Insight mainly to monitor high value transactions aiming that this move could curb the circulation of black money.
The project has been initiated for datamining, collection collation and processing of tax-related information and will play a key role in widening of tax base and track tax evaders.
It is an integrated platform that will use vast amounts of information easily available on social media to conduct raids online rather than the traditional way of conducting random tax raids.
The platform will dig into multiple sources of information to search out tax evaders from social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Last year, the tax department had signed a pact with L&T Infotech for the implementation of this Project.
The project is also expected to set up a streamlined data exchange mechanism for other government departments too.
