‘Project Insight’ has a new target, social media posts. Prime Minister Modi’s government will soon raid through a massive warehouse of virtual information that is collected not only from traditional sources like banks but also from social media sites, matching user’s spending patterns with income declarations, reported by Bloomberg. So might want to think twice before showing off your new possessions or vacation locations on Instagram and even Facebook.
‘Project Insight’ was an initiative curated by the Finance Ministry of India which was conceptualised about seven years ago and cost about Rs.1,000 cr. It was planned to exploit technology to widen the tax base and curb the number of tax evaders.
‘Project Insight’ will complement the world’s largest biometric identity database and will help in catching tax evaders in a non-intrusive manner. The Indian economy is one of the fastest growing in the world, but revenues fail to reflect it. The integrated platform will play a fundamental role in widening the tax base and data mine to track tax evaders. India’s tax-to-GDP ratio is about 17 percent compared with 25 percent for most Asian countries, according to government data.
The government has recently made many moves towards the development of this program. Last July, a deal was confirmed with L&T Infotech Ltd for a three-phase implementation process which is expected to start May 2017. The project is intended to be a long-term contract, with no particular time frame. L&T will work on a “build-own-operate-transfer model” which will build and run the project during the contract period and then transfer the system to the government.
“Data analytics is the way forward for tax administrations across the world,” said Amit Maheshwari, managing partner at an accountancy firm, Ashok Maheshwary & Associates near New Delhi in a Bloomberg report. “This will also put an end to harassment by tax officials as there will be no public interface. Perceived randomness in scrutiny will come to an end.”
Source: Bloomberg
