IT likely to crackdown and prosecute habitual tax evaders

Reports said the strategy  was taken at a recently-concluded national conference of I-T top officers where  where it was decided to take stringent action against such evaders.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes had prepared a strategy paper saying the IT department should instill the fear of "incarceration, loss of liberty and social opprobrium" in tax evaders and prosecute them in large numbers to create a credible deterrence against the menace of black money.

Reports quoted CBDT Chairperson Anita Kapur as saying that as part of the government's initiative to crack down on black money instances, the department has changed its strategy from just getting unpaid tax and penalty from evaders to going tougher. 

"We just don't want to get penalty and unpaid tax from the evader. We don't want to do that. Because, for us, tax evasion is not only a menace in that sense, it is also spoiling the entire compliance culture (in the country) because the people who are tax compliant feel that the system is unfair," she had been quoted as saying 

"Our focus should not be collection and it should be taken to a logical conclusion which is that an evader not only pays penalty (on the tax evaded) but also be prosecuted," she said.

At present there are over 4 crore taxpayers in the country.