-Livemint.com One-off gains from Income Disclosure Scheme 2016 call for scepticism about any immediate claims of demonetisation having widened India’s income tax net News reports have quoted government officials making claims about a record increase in the number of Income Tax Payers in 2016-17. Should such claims be seen as a success of demonetisation in forcing unscrupulous individuals to become a part of income tax net? An analysis of direct tax collection...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The income tax department has identified an additional 67.54 lakh non-filers who carried out high-value transactions in the 2014-15 financial year, but did not file tax returns for 2015-16. The I-T department is set to initiate action against these people soon. The information was collected from banks and other financial institutions. Data analysis carried out by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) identifies non-filers about whom specific...

-The Economic Times MUMBAI: For the first time, the income-tax department will use big data analytical tools to go through personal bank deposits to segregate black money holders from genuine tax-payers, two people in the know have said. While the government has used big data analytical tools for corporate tax reporting in some cases in the past, this is the first time that it will use analytics on such a large scale...

-The Hindu The scheme also shuts out ‘innocent’ taxpayers who filed returns on time but whose cases were chosen for scrutiny to verify claims. Tax payers, whose returns were picked for random scrutiny by the authorities in recent years, would not be eligible to turn concealed income into ‘white’ under the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS), announced in the Union Budget to bring black money into the tax net. Experts believe this may...

-Huffington Post Of all the arguments that have been raised this turbulent spring in our country, one stands out as egregiously vulgar. It evokes in me the moral equivalent of the middle-ear reflex to high intensity sounds, which has a special place in the hierarchy of unpleasant sensations. It's the tax nationalism argument. In essence, it's this: How dare students benefitting from subsidized education funded by OUR tax money hold opinions that...