AGARTALA, Aug 20 (TIWN): The Income Declaration Scheme, 2016 had provides an opportunity to every Indians who have not paid full taxes in the past to come forward and declare the undisclosed income and pay tax, surcharge and penalty totaling in all 45% of such undisclosed income declared. After progressing with 2 years of its Governance, BJP Govt. declared every citizen would contribute to his country and no one should evade taxes. However, Tripura has huge amount of unpaid tax payers, including Govt. high officials and Ministers. Earlier for businessmen it was easy to skip the tax issue, but now the state has been alarmed more than 2 times via Tax Officials about the risks of unpaid taxes. Modi Govt. also turned the heat on Tripura Govt for revenue collection, via his Tax Commissioners, asked the public of Tripura from businessmen to High Govt. officials to disclose the properties within September 30th. Otherwise legal action will be taken against them, whoever it is. In a press meet held on July 14 at Agartala, Rakhesh Kumar Goyal, Commissioner of Income Tax, West Bengal said, "This is the 3rd time, we are holding meeting here in Tripura to warn the public to pay income taxes".

Since 1988 there are records of many unauthorized properties and so many undisclosed properties in Tripura, so the Prime Minister has given a last chance to its citizen including other states too to pay the income tax and disclose property within September 30.

However, not only Tripura all the states will go through the same process. “Pay the tax before the time, otherwise when the time will end it will act like a Time-Bomb. As BJP led Central Govt. do not want to harass the public, so the Govt. has launched the scheme”, Goyal said on July 14.

“If once the property is disclosed after 30^th September, then people have to hire lawyers , go to the court and anyway then the harassment will have no end”, Goyal said.  “So pay the tax before survey, after survey we will go for legal action”, he added.

As per Northeastern Principal Commissioner L C Joshi, there are only 43,000 tax payers amongst 37 lakhs people of Tripura.

However, Tripura is lagging far behind in Tax-Paying in compare to the other states. In 2012-13 FY Tripura’s income tax was 100 crores, in 2013-14  FY it was only 65 crores and in 2015-16 it was only 104 crores, which is not at all satisfactory.

But the good thing about Modi’s proposed tax disclosing process is that the information contained in the declaration shall not be shared with any other law enforcement agency. The information will also not be shared within the Income Tax Department for any investigation in respect of a valid declaration.