The Income Tax (I-T) department, according to the Congress party, has filed a notice for roughly Rs 1,700 crore, including penalty and interest, for the assessment years 2017–18 to 2020–2021, the party said on Thursday. The action was taken just hours after the Delhi High Court denied an appeal contesting the four assessment years' worth of reassessment procedures.
The national party, which has stated it is already experiencing a financial shortage due to restricted bank accounts, would be much more concerned after receiving the I-T notice shortly before the Lok Sabha elections.
Vivek Tankha, a Congress lawyer and Rajya Sabha MP, reportedly acknowledged the notifications and stated that the INC will contest them further, calling them "undemocratic and unreasonable."
According to reports, the tax department has already retrieved Rs 135 crore in interest and arrears for taxes owed for the assessment year 2018–19 from the bank accounts of the Congress in Delhi.
Citing its previous ruling, a panel of Justices Yashwant Varma and Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav declined to impede the reassessment procedures from commencing for an additional term. The bench stated that the rationale behind the previous ruling (2014–15 to 2016–17) also applied to the most recent petition.
The Congress party contested the start of reassessment procedures for the assessment years 2014–15 to 2016–17 in the previous appeal, which was denied last week.
The motion was denied by the Delhi High Court, which noted that the IT department had presented "substantial and concrete" evidence that needed more investigation and review. The tax authorities had said that over these three years, an estimated Rs 520 crore had evaded assessment.
The tax body also stated that cash transactions involving Congress were also discovered during its investigations on several businesses, including a few purportedly connected to Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar and a Surat-based company. The IT department declared it unlawful to allow political parties to benefit from tax deductions.
