Dirty dozen owes 90 % of India's tax dues

About a dozen or so individuals account for around 90 per cent of the total income tax arrears of around Rs1,96,000 crore in the country, with Pune-based stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan leading the pack, according to a draft report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

CAG said 84 per cent of the Rs1,96,000 crore can't be realised due to various reasons like death, insolvency,  business liquidation or insolvency. ''Most of these arrears are `unrealisable 100 per cent','' CAG said in its report.
    
According to CAG, Khan has not paid income tax to the tune of Rs50,345.73 crore while Chandrika Tapuriah, wife of his associate Kashi Nath Tapuria, owed the tax department Rs20,540.83 crore in arrears. Another big fish, late stock broker Harshad Mehta owed Rs15,944.38 crore in tax arrears.
    
"The demand against individuals is highly skewed, with 12 individuals (4.3 per cent of the total cases) accounting for 90 per cent of the arrear demand. One individual Hasan Ali Khan accounts for 43 per cent of the total arrear demand,'' CAG said in a draft report tabled in Parliament.

Khan and the Tapuriah couple are involved in a number of cases, including money laundering, tax evasion and passport forgery. Agencies probing these, however, have drawn a blank so far on their activities and modus operandi.

Others involved in tax evasion included A D Narrotam (Rs5,781.86 crore), Hiten P Dalal (Rs4,200.04 crore), Jyoti H Mehta (Rs1,739.57 crore), Ashwin S Mehta (Rs1,595.51 crore), B C Dalal (Rs1,535.89 crore), S Ramaswamy (Rs1,122.48 crore) and Uday M Acharya (Rs683.22 crore).
 
CAG further said that while the government collected direct tax worth Rs4,35,000 crore in 2009-10, there was still an uncollected portion of Rs2,29,000 crore in March 2010, equivalent to 54 per cent of the total direct tax collections.

"The arrears of demand also registered a steep hike in last five years," it said.

It said that in 1,54,198 cases, involving an outstanding demand of Rs 4,543.83 crore, the demand was not transferred to the tax recovery officers in spite of non-recovery for more than a year.