To check income tax evasion, the Institute of Chartered accountants of India (ICAI) has suggested the finance ministry to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the PAN data, voter list and bank accounts. The accounting regulator feels there are a significant number of people who evade tax and can be brought under the tax net if a proper examination of the above data is done.
To begin with a pilot project can be started in metropolitan cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi.
According to ICAI, banking is largely computerised these days therefore it would not be very difficult to obtain list of bank accounts with names and addresses of customers from the banks. For effective utilisation of this data, it is necessary that the bank account gets linked with PAN.
The ICAI has said the government can ask banks for a list of all bank accounts where PAN is not available. Subsequently, a suitable time may be given to the banks to collect PAN from each of the account holders who do not have one. Thereafter, every year the bank may be asked to submit two lists of bank accounts, one with the PAN and another without PAN giving the aggregate of the deposits and withdrawals during the year.
