Congress Gets Fresh Income Tax Notice of Rs 1,700 Crore, Govt Sources Claim ‘Piecemeal Payments Made So Far’ – News18

Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the Income Tax Department issued a demand notice of Rs 1,700 crore to the Congress party. As per sources, the fresh notice issued to the party is for assessment years 2017-18 to 2020-21 and includes penalty and interest.

This comes a day after the Delhi High Court dismissed the party’s petition challenging the tax notices, sources said.

The Grand Old Party has alleged that the Centre wants to freeze bank accounts.

On March 28, the Delhi High Court rejected petitions by the Congress that challenged the initiation of tax reassessment proceedings against it for four years by tax authorities. The pleas were dismissed in terms of its earlier decision refusing to interfere with the opening of reassessment for another period, a bench of Justices Yashwant Varma and Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav said.

In the petition which was dismissed last week, the Congress party had challenged initiation of reassessment proceedings pertaining to assessment years 2014-15 to 2016-17.

Last Friday, the Delhi High Court had noted that the Income Tax Department appears to have collated “substantial and concrete evidence” regarding unaccounted transactions worth Rs 520 crore involving the Congress party with respect to Lok Sabha Elections 2019 and Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections in 2018 and 2013.

The court also dismissed the Congress petition that IT department must not re-open the assessments of the years 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17 filed by the party. The HC has said that Congress chose to approach it only a few days before the time of completion of assessment would expire (March 31) and at the proverbial fag end of proceedings.

The IT Department wanted to re-open assessments of the Congress from 2014 until 2021 after it found “incriminating evidence” in searches showing unaccounted transactions of the party.