New Delhi, Feb 3: The first phase data from the government's "Operation Clean Money", launched earlier this week, revealed that deposits worth millions post the note ban annoucement are presently under the IT scanners and that all concerned parties will be issued a notice by the department after preleminary investigations. 

The It offical stated that ther were 18 lakh cases where the account holder's deposits do not match with their iffical income size and this glaring pecularity will be thoroughly investigated. The amount of money invovled is more than a billion and the IT department will be sending out notices within 10 days from today. 

"This is only the first phase of data that we have put in the domain of people's e-filing account. More set of data is set to come in phases 2, 3 and 4. It would be good if the concerned people would reply to our notices because if they choose to ignore it then we will take stricter action against them", he said. 
 
The initial phase of Operation Clean Money involves e-verification of large cash deposits made during November 9 to December 30, 2016. According to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), data analytics has been used for comparing the demonetisation data with information in the department's databases. 
 
The information in respect of these cases will be made available in the e-filing window of the taxpayer at the government's e-filing portal. In this connection, CBDT Chairman Sushil Chandra told BTVi in a separate interview that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's taxation proposals for next year seek a significant expansion in the tax net.
 
Presenting the 2017-18 Budget in the Lok Sabha, Jaitley said he proposes to halve the income tax for persons earning between Rs 2.5 lakh-Rs 5 lakh from the current 10 per cent.
 
"This will reduce the tax liability of all persons with incomes below Rs 500,000 either to zero (with rebate) or 50 per cent of their existing liability. It has been done to widen the taxpayer base in the lower slab to bring the non-filers into the tax net," he said. 
 
"Afet demonetisation a lot of money has been deposited. Amounts of over Rs 2 lakh have been deposited in 1 crore accounts having 70 lakh unique PAN numbers," Chandra told BTVi.
 
"The department has just launched the Clean Money Abhiyan and it is much easier for us now to track these accounts," he added. Jaitley in his Wednesday budget speech said that post demonetisation, deposits between Rs 2-80 lakh had been made into 1.09 crore accounts.
 
On the Securities Transaction Tax (STT) at 10 per cent rate proposed by Jaitley, the CBDT chief said it is an "anti-abuse" provision.