An Illustrative Inquiry Under The Black Money Act

The Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income & Assets) & Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 ("BMA") is a strict taxation law that seeks to heavily tax and criminally punish taxpayers having undisclosed foreign incomes and assets located outside India. This article seeks to examine an illustrative case scenario of investigation/inquiry under the BMA and its interplay with the income tax law.

Illustration

The taxpayer files his returns regularly with the income-tax department. However, to his surprise, he receives a summons from the Directorate of Intelligence and Criminal Investigation requiring him to submit certain information regarding certain foreign incomes that he has earned in the past years. The taxpayer has erroneously and inadvertently not declared such incomes in his tax returns filed in India.