Advice your tax payers not to quote PAN for railway tatkal bookings
Indian Railways(IR) Displaying confidential
Tax Payers information
PAN
as identity proof for Tatkal bookings
IR has started collecting PAN and other
specified identity information in support of tatkal bookings as per recent
direction and displaying PAN alongwith name, sex and age of reserved passengers
on the reservation charts pasted on to the railway compartments.
A
boon for benami transactions
Finance Act 2012 has made it mandatory for
certain traders like jewellery dealers to collect tax (TCS) from customers on
purchase of jewellery worth Rs.2 lakhs and above. While complying with TCS
rules for collection, payment and uploading of TCS information (Efiling of TDS
returns) jewellery dealers have to furnish PAN of customers. For Certain
customers it is not convenient to provide PAN as they may have constraints in
explaining source (black money earned through corruption, undeclared incomes
etc.,) and in such cases to accommodate high networth customers, the traders
have a easy source of benami PAN particulars like name, sex and age from
reserved railway compartments. While I was travelling from Bangalore
to Hyderabad i
have noticed certain persons seriously copying PAN particulars alongwith name,
age and sex pasted on to the reserved compartments, on enquiry they have stated
that they are paid Rs.10 per PAN particulars by some traders. These persons are
copying selected PAN information of senior citizens, women etc., only from
sleeper class with the intention that passengers in sleeper class are not
serious tax payers and generally salaried class.
Impact
on traders:
Traders providing wrong particulars of PAN
are penalised with Rs.10000 for violation of furnishing wrong particulars.
Traders can always say that the have accepted the PAN particulars on the face
value as there is no condition for the traders to collect xerox copy of PAN
card at the time of sale of jewellery. In how may cases till now income tax
department has penalised traders submitting wrong particulars of PAN. Afterall
Income Tax department wants taxes. This is known to the department only in case
of long drawn dispute by the PAN holder. Generally these disputes are settled
after 2 years.
Impact
on PAN holders who is a tax payer:
This is known only to the regular tax
payers, who regularly check their tax credit on form 26 AS provided by the
Income Tax department on their website. This form 26 AS is updated only on filing
of etds returns by traders. There is almost 6 - 12 months time for the PAN
holder to known that a transaction of above nature has taken place on his name
and only if he goes through form 26 AS. On noticing the tax credit of above
nature while reconciling form 26 AS for tax credits for filing the return
during subsequent financial year i.e July/September, the tax payer has an
option to exclude the same and go ahead in filing the return. In that case the
department will first initiate action from the tax payer side asking him to
prove that he has not carried on the above transaction. The onus lies on the
genuine tax payer for the fault committed by the traders. All this dispute
settlement takes a time more than 2 years. The department may also ask the genuine
tax payer to explain the sources of above transaction.
Impact
on PAN holders who is a not tax payer:
This is not known to the non tax
payer/filler at all and he comes know only when the tax department issues a
notice to explain the source of above transaction. This is a long drawn process
by which only genuine public are scapegoat again and again and intelligent
business man and corrupt people are free from all hassles.
Wayout
The IR should stop publishing confidential tax
particulars on the reservation charts that are displayed on the railway
compartments. Further Tax department should put a rule that while quote the PAN
the traders/dealers have to mandatory collect self attested pan xerox copy to avoid
unnecessary litigation to the genuine public.
Public should quote their PAN only while
dealing in mandatory financial transactions and avoid quoting the same for identity
proof.
This is communicated to all in the larger
interest of public, railways, and tax department.
Premnath D.S
Chartered Accountant
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