The leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, Shaktisinh Gohil, has demanded that the Income Tax department should find out if the companies signing memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with the state government at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors’ Summits have paid their taxes.
In a missive to the Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Gohil drew his attention towards industrialists and corporates signing MoUs every alternate year since 2003 to set up projects in Gujarat worth hundreds and thousands of crores of rupees, indicating they had funds on hands or would raise the funds to honour the commitment for making investment in the state.
“This calls for a detailed scrutiny of the accounts of the companies by the tax authorities to check whether there is any irregularity or tax evasion by them,” Gohil said in the letter, urging that I-T authorities must recover the taxes in case of any irregularity.
Pointing out that many companies, after signing MoUs, approached nationalised banks seeking loans worth thousands of crores, Gohil advised the banks to be careful in lending such companies which just signed MoUs for raising funds from banks and then diverted the money to other businesses.
“It is pertinent to note that salaried and middle class people having average income regularly pay Income Tax and other taxes due from them, corporate houses, industrialists and businessmen having transactions running into thousand of crores of rupees do tend to fudge their accounts in order to hide actual taxable incomes from the authorities,” said Gohil in the letter.
