LUDHIANA: The income tax department has come across a case wherein a bullion trader of Ludhiana, who has a small shop near College Road, has evaded tax of several crores by depositing Rs 7 crore in his firm’s bank account and claiming it to be a single day sale of gold on November 8, 2016, the day of demonetization. According to his claims, the whopping sale was made by him in a span of two to three hours when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the note ban.“A businessman has to pay tax on his profits and not on sale of goods. This trader claimed that he sold gold worth Rs 7 crore that day. It, however, appears to be his undisclosed income,” said an I-T official.Unsatisfied with his claims, I-T teams, under principal commissioner Parneet Sachdev, conducted a survey on the office-cum-shop of the businessman on October 3 and found incriminating evidence about his claim being false. The sleuths were shocked to see the small size of the shop where the businessmen claimed to have attended 350 to 400 “unnamed” customers in about three hours on November 8, 2016. And all those customers allegedly came to purchase gold below Rs 2 lakh only.Sources said the investigation conducted so far by the department has revealed that the Rs 7-crore cash was black money as all the sale bills entered in his books were fictitious. It was his modus operandi to keep every bill below Rs 2 lakh otherwise as per TCS (tax collected at source) law, he would have to pay 1% tax on all such transactions and also furnish records of such buyers along with their PAN numbers.The department also found that he manipulated his books by showing fake expenditures. Sources said it was suspected that the businessman may be involved in running a facilitation network of converting black money of others into white. The department is investigating the entire money trail Two years after demonetization, the department has started conducting surveys on the high-value depositors whose cash deposits are suspicious and have so far not been able to submit proofs to the department in support of their claims.On August 30, the investigation wing of the department had surveyed a business family of the city trading in woollens. They had deposited Rs 10 crore in their accounts during note ban and officials found two family members having six PAN cards. On the same day, a goldsmith too was surveyed who had deposited Rs 5 crore in his accounts during demonetization.

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