Concerning the tax demand notices of Rs 3,500 crore in view of Lok Sabha polls, the Income Tax department on Monday told the Supreme Court that it won't take any coercive action against Congress.
The Congress Saturday has stated that it has received fresh notices for the assessment years 2014-15 to 2016-17. With this, there is a raise in the demands of Rs 1,745 crore. Furthermore, taking the total demand to Rs 3,567 crore if we add the notice for assessment years of 1994-95 and 2017-18 to 2020-21.
The BJP-led Central government accuses the Congress of indulging in “tax terrorism” to “financially cripple” it ahead of Lok Sabha elections. For this, hours after the party hit out at, fresh notices were received this Friday evening.
And prior to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the string of notices followed the I-T department’s raids where it claimed to have traced “unaccounted transactions” of Rs 523.87 crore.
The party had lost in the Delhi High Court on March 22 against a challenge to the search operations conducted by the I-T department. The Congress party accused the said department stating that these were “time-barred” and a “delayed action”.
In addition, the Congress party lost its appeal before the Income-Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) in March this year. Here, it had expected a stay on withdrawal of Rs 135 crore from its bank accounts.
Due to this, the Congress members have stated that they would stage a nationwide protest against the tax notices. The Congress wrote in the stated, "Eight years of Income Tax returns of the Indian National Congress [INC] have been reopened on baseless, manufactured grounds to levy patently illegal Income Tax demand orders totaling thousands of crores of rupees. This is nothing but a blatant and naked attack on the very principle of democracy."
