Foreign earnings of IT staff under tax scanner

Also, IT companies employees who don’t report their foreign income while going on contracts abroad, will get in trouble as department will start getting information with automatic exchange of information between nations kicking in.

“If you will go to any office, you will see there is pressure to be sensitive to the concerns of the tax payers. But if you are not harsh with tax evaders, then you are not doing your job,” the CBDT boss said.

While saying income tax department officials have to be polite, she referred to a statement by finance minister Arun Jaitley that “law is law and there is no place for compassion in law”. She said, law has to be enforced fairly and evenly in every case.

The new system called Income Tax Business Application, will be completely rolled out by 2016. “Once the project is fully operational, when an assessing officer opens the PAN number of a tax payer he will get his or her full profile. Whatever information is with us, assessing officer will be able to see,” said Ms Kapur.

Income tax department get information from banks, credit card companies, TDS, annual information return, and from other departments. Ms Kapur said that now income tax department will also be able to get information from other countries. “It is not always a big tax cheat who does not decl-are overseas income,” she said, expressing hope that this will prevent understatement of income by these professionals.