Income Tax Department’s answer to Ashnir Grover’s question: Department can ask for personal ITR details from start-up investor.

The Income Tax Department has said that the department can ask for personal ITR details from any investor. From this detail, the department finds out whether the investment amount is correct as per the income shown in the personal ITR of the investor or not. This information has been given by the Income Tax Department in response to a question asked by the ex-co-founder of ‘Bharat Pay’ Ashneer Grover through X-Post (Twitter).

What did Ashneer Grover say?

Ashneer Grover made a post on social media platform X on Friday. In this post he wrote – In the last one month, many start-ups have received tax notices, in which they have been asked to provide information about their shareholders. On this, Ashneer Grover said- How and why would a company have the ITR details of its investors?

What did the Income Tax Department say?

In response, the department said that the reason for asking for the details was to establish the credibility of the shareholders. The Income Tax Department, citing Section 68 of the ‘Income Tax Act 1961’, said – the Assessing Officer (AO) has demanded IT details from the investors within his rights. The job of AO is to keep the identity of the investor, to check the creditworthiness of the investors and to keep the details of how genuine the transaction is.