Search and Seizure operations conducted by Income Tax (IT) Department has unearthed Capital Gains of above Rs 1300 crores from JDAs, which were not reported by the concerned taxpayers.
The Income Tax Department started looking for and seizing certain individuals on October 20, 2022, and November 2, 2022, because these individuals had signed Joint Development Agreements (JDAs) with various real estate developers. More than 50 different locations in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Goa were combed through during the search operation.
During the course of the search operations, a significant quantity of incriminating evidence, which included paper documents and digital data, was located and taken into custody. In addition, evidence pertaining to occupancy certificates (OCs), development agreements, and sale agreements has been taken into custody. Even though they had official clearances from the right authorities, these pieces of evidence showed that landowners still didn’t report income they got from capital gains on the sale of land they gave to developers through JDAs.
In addition, it was found that landowners frequently hid the full value of the consideration paid for transfer land and artificially inflated the cost of acquisition and other costs in order to reduce their income from capital gains for a number of years. This was done in an effort to minimise the amount of tax that would be owed on the profits from the sale of the land. In addition to this, it was found out that some of the landowners failed to file their ITRs for a number of years during which they were eligible to receive income from their capital gains. When asked about it, the affected taxpayers admitted that they had made mistakes and agreed to report any income from capital gains that was found and pay any taxes that were owed.
Because of the search actions that have been taken, more than Rs. 1300 crore in unaccounted-for income has been found so far. In addition, assets that were kept under wraps, totaling more than 24 crore rupees and consisting of cash and gold jewelry, have been recovered.
More investigation is being conducted by the IT Department right now.
CBDT Press Release dt. 17/11/2022: Income Tax Department conducts search actions in Karnataka