Rs 48 crore undisclosed income from 7 bullion dealers detected by IT Department in Bengaluru

Bengaluru: The Income Tax Department has detected nearly Rs 48 crore undisclosed income from seven bullion dealers during a search of their premises in the city and on verifying their bank accounts, said an official on Friday. "The search operation of the seven bullion merchants and verification of their bank accounts have resulted in the detection of undisclosed income of Rs 47.74 crore after demonetisation of high value notes on November 8," said IT Department official Alex Mathew in a statement here. The investigation wing of the department found that the dealers had exchanged the high demonetised notes on commission from people wanting to convert their black money into white through smaller jewellers. "Preliminary investigation found huge sales of gold biscuits by the dealers in November post-demonetisation. Besides receipts in RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement), huge cash deposits were made in their bank accounts, as evident from the number of entries in October vis-a-vis November," said Mathew. To avoid detection and TDS (tax deduction at source), the dealers made cash transactions below Rs 2 lakh without details of customers to whom they sold the bullion and their PAN (Permanent Account Number). "Some of the merchants had back-dated their bills and even paid VAT (Value Added Tax) to make the transactions genuine. They had also suppressed sales figures in the previous years and not filed tax returns for years," said Mathew. In another case, sleuths of the IT department seized Rs 1.15 crore in cash from the house of a transport operator in a village near Anekal on the city's outskirts. "On a tip-off that old notes were being exchanged for new currency on commission, our sleuths approached the operator disguised as customers and caught him with the cash, including Rs.1.07 crore in Rs.2,000 notes," added Mathew.