Massive Rs 500 Crore Tax Fraud Exposed in Pune: Tax Professionals Under Scanner
The Directorate of Income Tax has recently uncovered a major fraud related to the filing of fraudulent income tax returns (ITRs) in Pune. In this fraud, some tax professionals misused gaps in the old return-filing system to claim deductions without proper proof. According to a senior income tax officer, the fraud is estimated to be more than Rs. 500 crore.
This case is one of the major cases of claiming fake deductions that have recently been exposed in different parts of the country. According to the reports, these tax professionals used to operate in Pune and areas around it. They used to lend their services to salaried professionals as “return specialists” and made taxpayers believe that these services would provide them with higher returns than usual.
More than 10000 claims were filed by these tax professionals over a period of five years. According to the tax officials, a similar pattern was noticed in returns filed by them. They claimed deductions for housing loan interest and principal repayment, medical and insurance payments, investments into saving instruments, educational loans, and house rent allowance (HRA) and did not even submit proper documents as proof. It was a loophole in the earlier tax filing system, which has not been fixed.
The tax officials noted a consistent pattern in the returns filed by these tax professionals, and investigations of these returns are still going on. In the returns, deductions were claimed that were not actually allowed under the law.
An officer said, “We have already taken action against tax professionals who indulged in it and are now working to identify individual taxpayers who have benefited from the bogus returns and will now face a penalty and prosecution.” Further said, “Taxpayers would not be able to claim indemnity by blaming intermediaries. Any refund claimed in their name would be reviewed, and penal provisions would be applied.”
Earlier, the Income Tax department had found cases where people misused PAN numbers, claimed false TDS credits, or created fake trusts to get tax benefits. But officials working on the Pune case said this is the biggest tax fraud they have seen in recent years.
