Project Insight likely to be launched next month; 7 things you need to know

As promised by Modi-government before taking charge of the country in 2013, this government has taken some severe steps in order to curb black money floating in the country.

After demonetisation, Operation CLean Money, Income declaration scheme, now it is time for Project Insight. 

The Income Tax Department, will be launchingf "Project Insight' from next month where they will use big data analytics to match information from social media sites to deduce mismatches between spending pattern and income declaration.

The tax department had last year signed a pact with L&T Infotech for implementation of Project Insight, which is designed to strengthen the non-intrusive information driven approach for improving tax compliance.

"Currently beta testing is on and the integrated platform for Project Insight should be launched by next month," the official told. 

Earlier a report by NDTV had mentioned that the government has been working on ‘Project Insight’ over the past seven years for a cost of nearly $156 million.

Here are five things you need to know about Project Insight:

1. Introduced by the Income Tax Department to strengthen the non-intrusive information-driven approach for improving tax compliance and effective utilization of available information.

2. Chetan Chandak, Head of Tax research, H&R Block India said Income tax Transaction Interaction Analysis Centre (INTRAC) and Compliance Management Central Processing Centre (CMCPC) are the two modules of Project insight .

3.  INTRAC uses technologies such as data processing, data quality monitoring, data analytics which helps in showing discrepancies in income. 

4. For example, if you purchased a property worth Rs 1 crore but have showed income of Rs 5 lakhs in your returns, an alert is generated for further investigations. In addition to which, INTRAC will mine data from the web and social media to gain more clarity about the person. If you post about a luxury trip and don’t file income tax returns, expect a letter from authorities seeking details of your income.

5. Without any human intervention CMCPC handles preliminary verification, generates bulk notices and follow-up on the same and also automatically uploads the replies provided by assessees. 

6. This initiative will help in widening the tax base and promote voluntary compliance by individuals. 

7. The new technical infrastructure will also be leveraged for implementation of Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and Common Reporting Standard (CRS), a PTI report said.

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