Officials of the Income Tax department might knock on your door if you post a picture of your luxury car on Facebook or photos of your lavish wedding on Instagram. From April 1, the I-T department will monitor taxpayers’ social media profiles under Project Insight. Project Insight will be launched to trace black money and deduce mismatches between spending patterns and income declarations.
The I-T department has signed a pact with L&T Infotech to carry out Project Insight. According to a report, the I-T department will create a 360-degree profile of taxpayers, including new and non-filers, to gauge their accountability and tax liability. The comprehensive profile will have details such as transactions, relationships, social networking accounts, IT returns, IT forms, TDS/TCS statements, and Statement of Financial Transactions received from financial institutions.
Project Insight will help the tax inspectors monitor high-value transactions, curb the circulation of black money, and catch tax evaders. So, if you share a picture of your new car or a photo of your foreign vacation, the I-T department will compare your spending with your income declaration to deduce the mismatch. In case of mismatches, the next step could be a tax raid in your home or office. The motive is to bring more people under the tax net.
With Project Insight, India now joins a select league of countries like Belgium, Canada, and Australia that are already using big data to check tax evasion, as reported by Bloomberg. The UK government started ‘Connect’ in 2010, and the system has prevented the loss of 4.1 billion pounds ($5.4 billion) in revenue.
