Court penalises pvt firm in tax evasion case

A private firm has been penalised with a fine of Rs eight lakh in a tax evasion case by a Delhi court which noted that increasing cases of tax evasion by firms has been causing huge loss to the state exchequer and needed to be curbed with a firm hand.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Devendra Kumar Sharma held the firm, Radiant Polymers Pvt Ltd, guilty of not depositing the deducted amount of TDS with the Income Tax Department within stipulated time.
The court imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on the firm for the financial year 2008-09 being first time offence.

Apart from this, the court also imposed a fine of Rs 3 lakh each for the financial years 2009-10 and 2010-11 on the firm being subsequent offence committed after commission of the first one.
"Evasion of tax by companies/persons in one form or the other by not depositing TDS or other taxes within prescribed time by a company, is rising day-by-day which causes huge loss to government exchequer and such practice should be curbed with a firm hand.
"In this case, admittedly the convict (firm) was under obligation to deposit the TDS amount within stipulated period from the date of deduction but same was not deposited and there was a delay," the court said, adding that the delay was unexplained.

According to the Income Tax Department, the firm had deducted TDS amount of Rs 29.1 lakh, Rs 24.8 lakh and Rs 24.6 lakh for the financial years 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11 respectively from salaries of its employees.

It said despite having knowledge of deducting TDS and to deposit in within stipulated time as per the Income Tax Act, the company showed "ignorance and deliberately diversified funds" for other purposes.
The firm submitted that entire TDS and penalty/interest has been deposited with the IT department.
The firm's counsel said the delay in depositing the amount was due to financial crunch and it had to first clear the dues of salary of 300 employees.