Income Tax Department Launches Nationwide Probe Into Suspicious Foreign Remittances, 394 Entities Under Scanner
The Income Tax Department has launched a nationwide campaign to investigate suspicious remittances abroad, revealing large amounts of foreign currency sent by low-income organizations. The investigation has revealed a network of fake charitable trusts and the suspicious role of professionals issuing Form 15CB, especially in border states.
An income tax verification exercise has been carried out throughout India to check instances of suspicious foreign remittances. It has been found after analysis that there are certain entities which have remitted huge foreign exchange outside India in the last three years. However, these entities are not maintaining consistent income and business records.
As per a press release made by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), a nexus of entities has been unearthed that was allegedly providing false entries to make donations and contributions through charitable trusts. In the initial investigations, it came to light that most of these remitting entities were either not declaring their income tax returns or they had declared very low turnovers even when they had transferred huge amounts abroad.
The Income Tax Department stated that these entities had mentioned the purpose of foreign remittances as freight charges, software importation, or consultancy charges, but investigations on the ground level showed that these statements were not true in most cases. Some entities could not even be traced from the declared addresses.
