The Income Tax department has come up with a new scheme for informants who report the IT department about black money, benami properties or tax evasion. According to IT department, the person who will give information to the Central Board of Direct Taxes about black money will now get up to Rs 5 crore in reward.
The scheme came into effect Tuesday and the reward of Rs 5 crore is considerably larger than what was promised by the Centre in 2007 guidelines.
The Income Tax Informants Rewards Scheme 2018 says that informant will get more reward if the information is about undisclosed foreign assets under the Black Money Act of 2015.
It is learnt that the Centre has increased the reward with an aim to encourage more informants and seize a higher amount of black money and undisclosed assets.
Experts maintain that informants cannot hope to get the final rewards soon as defaulters often use several legal options and it takes a lot of time.
Information about tax evasion abroad will be regarded as a distinct category for the first time and it will be rewarded more under the new scheme launched by the Centre.
Notably, the informants will get both an interim award and a final one if their tip-off leads the IT department to a tax discovery.
The interim award will be 3% of the tax liability if the tip-off leads to foreign assets but with a ceiling of Rs 50 lakh.
For information about tax evasions in India, the informant will get a maximum interim award of Rs 10 lakh. But if the cash seized is over Rs 1 crore, the interim amount can be as high as Rs 15 lakh.
The final reward will be 5 per cent of the tax liability and up to Rs 50 lakh.
