Salaried class gets relief from notices

Minor discrepancies between Form-16 and 26AS to be ignored

The Budget 2018-19 has given a pleasant relief to salaried class as from now on they will be spared from demand notice for minor mismatch between returns filed by tax payer and data collected by the income-tax department.

“A policy decision has been made not to issue tax demand notices in case of minor mismatch in these instances. We trust the taxpayer and the step is aimed to make easy the processing of income tax returns,” CBDT chairman Sushil Chandra told PTI.

The measure, introduced in the latest Financial Bill, is aimed to provide relief to small and salaried class of taxpayers and aims to ease out issues of small discrepancies that sometimes crop up between the information on Form-16 (provided by the employer) and Form-26AS (tax credit statement received by the tax department).

He said the policy measure will be enforced in respect of any return furnished for the upcoming assessment year (2018- 19) commencing from April 1.

The CBDT chief said the policy measure will be enforced in respect of any return furnished for the assessment year 2018-19 commencing from April 1.

Addressing an Assocham post-Budget seminar, he said income-tax department is issuing notices to people who invested in crypto currencies like bitcoin but did not declare income or ‘profits earned’ from them.

“People who have made investments (in crypto currency) and have not declared income while filing taxes and have not paid tax on the profit earned by investing, we are sending them notices as we feel that it is all taxable,” said Mr Chandra’

He said that the income tax department had conducted various surveys on crypto currency exchanges to find as to how many people are regular contributors, how many have registered themselves and how many have done trading on that platform.

“We found out that there is no clarity on investments made by many people which means that they have not declared it properly,” said Mr Chandra.

“We have informed all the directors general of income-tax across India, they are issuing notices and so that would be taxed,” the top tax official added.

The CBDT chairman further said that as per income tax (laws), whatever money one is investing (in crypto currency), it would be taxable if it is unexplained. Besides, even the profit gained on the same is taxable.