Income Tax dept set to go after black money hoarders

Hyderabad: The income-tax department, which held a series of awareness programmes on the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS) which concluded on September 30, and faced poor response, plans to crack the whip on black money hoarders.

At the receiving end could be politicians, realtors, industrialists, businessmen and the families of NRIs who are having undisclosed money. Officials from the I-T department’s AP circle had identified more than 50,000 persons in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh as holders of undisclosed assets.

I-T investigation unit sources said the department had already sent notices to the identified persons in July this year asking them to declare undisc-losed income including assets to avoid action under Section 197 (c) of the Income-Tax Act.

CBDT had expected Rs 37,000 crore of black money from as many as 50,000 persons in Telugu states under IDS.  However, only 7,000 persons revealed their black money to the tune of Rs 11,000 crore. Of this, the dep-artment will get about Rs 4,950 crore towards 45 per cent tax. With the deadline for the IDS ending on September 30, officials are getting ready for further action.