Voluntary Disclosure Scheme: Comprehensive coverage

Chief Income Tax Commissioner, Neena Kumar, Udaipur Division called the businessmen from Udaipur as the most professional in the country. She made this comment while speaking as the Chief speaker in the joint seminar organised by UCCI in conjunction with the Income Tax Department.

Speaking on the theme of Voluntary Income Disclosure scheme, she said that no businessman should be wasting his/her time on fighting income tax cases, paying lawyer fees and taking mental stress. The best way of dealing with these issues is to ensure that all transactions are transparent and should ideally be done in an online format. She said that in the coming times, all transactions are set to be made online and one should brace for the same.

During the seminar, she gave some interesting pointers on the Voluntary Disclosure scheme. The following were some of the informative points made during the seminar:

• The scheme was announced in the 2016-17 budget.
• All information related to the scheme are available on the Income Tax Department website.
• The scheme is applicable for companies, partnership firms, proprietor firms and even individuals
• The last Voluntary Disclosure scheme was announced in 1997. During that time one had to fill hard copy forms but now all information can be filled online
• As per the scheme, disclosures need to be made between June 1st 2016 and Sept 30th 2016
• There is a provision to provide details on both fixed and movable assets
• The unannounced income could have been gained prior to March 2016
• One will have to pay 45% Tax (including all cess) on this voluntarily disclosed income
• Tax needs to be deposited till 30th November
• Information on Voluntary disclosures made will not be shared by Income Tax department with any other department
• Provision does not hold for income on which cases have been filed by Income Tax department and matter currently sub judice

On being questioned by a set of participants that the 45% tax was fairly heavy, Neena Kumar mentioned that as per the current tax structure if one included all the cess on top of the  income tax bracket, the tax rate anyways comes around 40% and hence there is only a nominal 5% additional charge being recovered