Section 138(1) of the Income Tax Act 1961 provides that income tax authorities may provide any information pertaining to a taxpayer to any other authority performing its function under any other law, provided that this is in the public interest.
Through a recent order,(1) the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) authorised the principal director general of income tax (systems) to share taxpayer information with nodal officers from the Goods and Service Tax Network (GSTN). The order also specified that such information must be provided by way of:
- request-based exchanges of data (in such cases, key financial fields captured in company income tax returns (ITRs) (eg, the status of ITR filings, turnover, gross total income (GTI), turnover ratio, GTI range, turnover range and any other field) must be provided);
- spontaneous exchanges of data; and
- automatic exchanges of data.
In all of the above cases, the nature of the information to be provided will be decided by the authorities concerned.
The CBDT also confirmed that in order to facilitate the provision of information, it will enter into a memorandum of understanding with the GSTN, which will set out, among other things:
- the nature of data exchanges;
- the ways in which confidentiality will be maintained; and
- mechanisms for the safe preservation of data.
Endnotes
(1) Order F225/105/2019/ITAII, 30 April 2019.
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