Your tax return can soon become public property via RTI

The Right to Information Act (RTI) may yet come back to bite the hand of the citizen who is supposed to be its main beneficiary.

In an order with far-reaching implications for privacy, central information commissioner (CIC) Shailesh Gandhi has suggested that your tax return — your most intimate financial information which you may want to guard from gangsters or even a curious neighbour — can soon become public property.

If anyone asks for it under the RTI Act, the income-tax department will have to hand over the information. The order pertains to any information regarding tax assessments, returns, evasion and even notings by income tax officials submitted to the tax department.

The case which opened the pandora’s box relates to an RTI query filed by Rakesh Kumar Gupta, who wanted information regarding the income tax files and assessment orders of Escorts, a Delhi-based company, its chairman Rajan Nanda, various branches of the Escorts Heart Research Institute, and Naresh Trehan, a heart surgeon and former head of the research institute.

The information commissioner’s order dated December 14, 2009, says that the information provided by a taxpayer to the taxman is part of his public duty and hence not subject to privacy laws. It says: “Information provided by an assessee to the department for purposes of income tax assessment is information disclosed in relation to a public activity and, therefore… section 8(1)(j) is inapplicable in the present case.” The section relates to the right of public authorities to deny information to RTI users on grounds of infringing on the right to privacy.

While the order is sure to be appealed against, its implications for personal financial data remaining private are huge.    

The CIC’s order did deal with the privacy issue, but dismissed it thus: “Parliament has not codified the right to privacy so far, hence in balancing the right to information of citizens and the individual’s right to privacy the citizen’s right to information would be given greater weightage.” The order, moreover, dismisses the concept of ‘privacy’ as a cultural notion, related to social norms, and different societies would look at these differently.

The order signed by Shailesh Gandhi takes into consideration some of the other prominent sections of the RTI Act under which details are denied to information seekers. These include information held under a fiduciary (trust) relationship, information that may impede the process of any ongoing investigation, and information that is of a commercial nature whose disclosure may compromise business secrets.

So why was Rakesh Gupta seeking to learn about Escorts’ and Naresh Trehan’s tax files and incomes? Apparently, he was an informer for the tax department who collected rewards by giving information on people who may be evading taxes. It thus made sense for him to find out whether his information was leading to higher tax assessments and could yield a reward.

Though this looked like a legitimate reason for Gupta to peek into Naresh Trehan’s tax returns, the downside is that you, too, are now liable to lose the confidentiality of your tax return. On the brighter side, if you are planning to give your daughter in marriage to Mr Right, you can clandestinely check if his income is what was indicated. Mr Right may, however, feel wronged.