I-T dept to publish names of tax defaulters

Tax defaulters beware! With tax recovery to the tune of more than Rs one lakh crore held up for lack of information about the whereabouts of defaulters, the Income Tax(I-T) department is working on plans to publish their names in newspapers.

The problem has been further compounded with several of the tax defaulters having created 'benami' assets to escape the dragnet.
The I-T department is embarking on this 'out-of-box solution' of bringing the names of tax defaulters in public domain in a bid to expose them.

The department, according to the official proposal, will publish in newspapers the names of those defaulting assessees who are either not traceable or whose assets are not identifiable.

Informants, in such cases, will also be given incentives which may include cash rewards, the proposal said. According to the latest data of the I-T department, out of a total outstanding arrear demand of Rs 2,29,032 crore (till March 2010), an amount of Rs 9,476 crore is unrealised or held up as the assessee is "not traceable" while Rs 92,360 crore is stuck as there are "no assets".