Rahul Mehta Gandhinagar LsCandidate
About --- benami property act - much ado about nothing
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If a property is bought by anyone before 31-mar-2010, then there is NOTHING income tax dept can do to owner of that property, unless that owner is non-person (i..e fictious non existent person). If owner is fictitious or owner has two PAN-IDs , and property was bought under second PAN-ID then income tax depot can confiscate that property.
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If a property is bought by anyone before 31-mar-2012, then it is possible, but very difficult for income tax dept to take much action. unless that owner is non-person (i..e fictious non existent person).
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If the property is bought by X in the name of Y after 31-mar-2010 (or 31-mar-2012), then income tax dept can only ask Y "where did you get money from". And if Y had shown income in or year before date of purchase, then again, there is nothing income tax dept can do
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The benami property act has been there since may-2014. NaMo only made punishments much more stringent in nov-2016. Otherwise, the provisions more or less are same. But how many confiscations were done under this act from may-2014 till nov-2017? Almost none.
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So nothing happened between may-2014 till nov-2017. And now, some say that miracles will happen between jan-2017 and may-2019 !!
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well, even if benami properties are seized, the total land under benami is not tiny. Much of the land hoaders have vast land holdings under charitable trusts and those lands holdings are much much older than 7 years. eg Tata , Godrej etc have over 10000 acres to 20000 acres of land in Mumbai alone and their have been owning it since 1940s !! Likewise, SoGa owns tons of land in Delhi via trusts, and all that land has been with trusts since ages and ages. All this land, as per laws printed by SoMoKe till date, is 100% "naami",. The land price has been high due to such naami hoarders, and also due to benami, but contribution of benami is tiny.
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So land bought before 31-mar-2010 will be outside the scope of the act. The land bought before 31-mar-2012 is also for all practical purposes outside the scope of the act, The land/flats etc bought after 1-apr-2012 will be confiscated ONLY if owner cant explain sources of incomes. Given that most hoarders are naami, and many benami have lands / plots bought before 6 years (or 4 years), total confiscations as % of total land hoarded in India will be tiny.
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Lets see how much land is confiscated in next 6 months