Women may soon heave a sigh of relief from their jewellery being seized during raids by the income tax department.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes has proposed to the finance ministry that seizure of jewellery during searches be stopped. Instead, a bank guarantee of an equivalent amount with an automatic periodical renewal clause should suffice, the board has said.
The suggestion was made at a meeting held between the finance minister and the CBDT last week.
While this could remove the fear of indiscriminate seizure, the board also suggested certain measures to ramp up investigations based on an internal committee report in May 2006.
The board has decided to convert the central intelligence bureau of income tax as the directorate of intelligence under investigation.
The directorate will collate information both from internal and external sources in a structured format to be used for tax deepening and widening purposes.
Permanent account number is one significant data, which the directorate will maintain and monitor. The provisions of Section 272B of the IT Act will be amended to empower the CIB to levy penalty in the event of violation in furnishing PAN data to the relevant authorities.
According to official sources, the tax return will be redesigned to include both a statement of high-end value transactions and a statement of affairs in case of individuals deriving income from business and operation.
These statements should be furnished in the electronic format to facilitate processing of information digitally and matching the information coming from other sources.
The internal committee was formed in 2005 with the terms of reference for examining the issue of high-value transactions covered by the CIB, modification of existing the CIB code, and the manner in which Form 60/61 collates date.
The other areas included developing database of important economic activities like educational institutions, private hospitals and nursing homes, exploring new areas of work as information under securities transactions tax and finally, formulating the role of CIB in handling annual information return.
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