Tips on Search & Seizure under Income Tax

Professional Tips on Search & Seizure under Income Tax

When the taxpayer is visited by the Income Tax Officer, the taxpayer started to feel feared. The taxpayer thinks that they will be arrested. But, when an officer visits for Search & Seizure under Income Tax Act. They don’t have the power to arrest any person and they can only seize the property. Following are Professional Tips on Search & Seizure under Income Tax Act:

“Person Searched” u/s 132 of the Income Tax Act,1961 cannot at all be arrested upon Search

During the course of an Income Tax Search, the Income Tax Authorities have no power at all to arrest the person searched or even to detain him in their custody. At any Search, the team of Income Tax Officials accompanies with Police Personnel.

Here, the Taxpayer wrongly presumes that today he is, for sure, going to be arrested by the Tax Officials while the Income Tax Act, 1961 does not give any power to the Income Tax Department to arrest an Individual immediately without trial & prosecution. At times, it has been experienced that the taxpayer (person searched) under this completely wrong impression unnecessary feels the undue pressures and behaves accordingly against the correct facts and position.

Therefore, we must educate the taxpayers with the correct position of law so that this rarest of rare action undertaken by the department must be handled/faced properly by the taxpayer in the right spirit and directions and with all confidence.
 
The above may be useful. The views expressed above are well researched yet personal.
 
Thanks & Best Regards

Suresh Wadhwa,
LL.B., FCA