I-T drive yields Rs 500 crore

New Delhi, Mar 28: The income tax department has mopped up a total of Rs 500 crore from about 60 multinationals, mostly Japanese, as a fo...

New Delhi, Mar 28: The income tax department has mopped up a total of Rs 500 crore from about 60 multinationals, mostly Japanese, as a follow-up of its tax evasion detection drive.

The amount has already been declared by the multinationals and paid-up as arrears, a senior IT department official said. Some of the major companies detected include Suzuki Motor Corporation, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Samsung Electronics, Sumitomo Corporation and Hyatt Hotels.

The IT department had been conducting surveys at the offices of most of the MNCs as part of its effort to plug the non-compliance by these companies in tax deduction at source (TDS).

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While Suzuki Motor Company (SMC) officials and nominees in Maruti Udyog Limited (MUL) have evaded taxes to the tune of about Rs 100 crore, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi officials have been alleged to have evaded Rs 50 crore as taxes.

The official stated that the IT departments of Delhi, Gurgaon and Faridabad are working jointly to crack down on major corporate houses who areevading taxes by not declaring the income of their foreign employees in Indian operations. Regarding investigations of Suzuki employees, the official said summons have already been issued to all senior directors, including MUL chairman Yoshio Saito on suspicion of tax evasion via under-declaration of their foreign income received in Japan.

It has been alleged that Suzuki officials working with MUL are getting two salaries one paid by MUL in Indian rupees and the other paid by SMC in Japan. As per Indian Income tax law, foreigners working in India have to file a declaration of any income earned by them abroad with their Indian employer. The Indian employer is then responsible for deducting tax at source on the total income of the foreign employee.

Though some Japanese employees have been declaring some foreign income to MUL, no such declarations were being filed prior to 1995. It was also found there was gross under-declaration of the foreign income by these employees.