Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)

Bengaluru, Jan 26: Income tax (IT) officials raided an office of a chartered accountant (CA) here, who it said was in the habit of submitting income tax returns of the employees of several corporates and claiming refunds on the basisof fake records.

The IT officials now believe that a huge racket of CAs which helps employees of companies to get refund of taxes deducted from their income, has been active in the city. These chartered accountants submit fake documents to IT department and get IT refunds. The chartered accountants get a commission of about ten percent of such refunds, it is said.

During the raid, the officials found several bogus documents apart from WhatsApp chat messages which support its findings. Employees of over 50 companies, which are clients of this chartered accountant, would have claimed refunds by submitting thousands of false returns by using fake documents, the officials have guessed.The officials however were tightlipped about the name and other details of the CA concerned.

The CA used to create bogus documents to show that the employees concerned have suffered loss in house property. By deducting this loss out of gross income, he used to claim refunds. He did this favour to employees by collecting ten percent of such refunds, it is gathered. The officials of the department said that about a thousand such claims have been made by claiming loss in house property, and refund of Rs 18 crore was obtained last year.

The officials of the department were alerted after they received large number of similar claims through the same CA. They contacted several employees for whom this particular CA had submitted returns, and found from them that they had not suffered losses in house property as claimed by the CA. The employees said that the CA promised them to get refunds somehow, details of which they were not aware. The department said that after the said raid, several more employees are being contacted.

The CA however has been claiming that these employees had asked him to file returns, duly showing loss in house property. It is said that WhatsApp chats of the CA with certain employees and documents they have recovered from the office of the CA show otherwise.

It is said that the CA concerned served employees of companies like IBM, Vodafone, SAP Labs, Biocon, Infosys, ICICI Bank, CISCO and Thomson Reuters.