Income Tax Dept Issues Notices To ‘Farmers’ With Abnormally High Incomes
The Income Tax department of the finance ministry has issued notices to individual tax assessees whose income from agricultural activities is unusually high, reports Moneycontrol. Around 700 individuals who have shown an income higher than Rs 20 lakh from agricultural activities have been served notices. The department has doubts regarding the authenticity of these claims as they are higher than the main source of income.
Around 100 people have received notices in Mumbai alone where the ‘agricultural income’ is double the the income reported as main income in the past. Since agriculture is exempt from income tax, the department feels that these incomes are from other sources and being filed to evade tax.
Some of the recipients even don’t have the large land parcel to justify the quantum of agricultural income they have declared. Neither the government nor income tax is targeting farmers, but anybody who is evading tax on the name of agriculture income will be dealt with strictly.A senior Income Tax official.
The number of people filing tax returns declaring agricultural income has shot up from 2.46 lakh assessees in 2009 to 4.25 lakh in 2010. It further went up from 6.56 lakh in 2011 to 8.12 lakh people in 2012.