The Income tax department has recently issued notices that have slapped nearly 100 staff. These employees are from various tech companies, police, and South Central Railways.
Income Tax Department stated, “Many of them work in government departments, PSUs, and prestigious companies. It is also noticed that a large number of them work with companies outside the State, but have their PAN based in A.P. and Telangana.”
“They have claimed refunds of as high as 75%-90% of TDS deducted by the employer,” Income Tax Department added.
The consultants, directly or through agents, approach employees and offer to file returns. These consultants take a 10% cut from the refund money.
The people that shared the information are unaware this is a fraudulent exercise and willingly provide credentials, receiving money in their accounts while paying commission.
According to the reports of the TOI, The employees with notices are all from Hyderabad and the allegations against these employees are for filing income tax returns with fraud to obtain tax refunds. The scam of nearly 40 crore.
Jaswanth Kumar of JK Associates said, “Our employees misused my number to put up posters promising tax refunds. They did it two years ago and circulated these again last year.”
“I reported collusion of former employees with mediators to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India”, Jaswanth Kumar added.
Jaswanth further added, “I haven’t been involved in tax consultancy for the past two years. I moved to Chennai.”
Recently, PwC Australia’s former chief executive among eight senior personnel was named and removed from the firm’s partnership in the fallout of the tax leaks scandal, although he is not accused of misusing government information.
The eight partners, who have left or are in the process of leaving, include former CEO Tom Seymour, who resigned in May after admitting he had received emails containing confidential information about the government’s tax plans.
The investigation identified a number of specific examples where professional standards were breached with respect to the misuse of confidential information or other matters reviewed by the ATO.
Moreover, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said on June 29 that the IT and consulting company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has sacked six employees after finding them guilty of accepting favours from certain staffing firms in the appointment of contractual workers.