Rights of an Assessee during Income Tax Raid
What’s in a raid?
· Authorized officers of the IT department can search residential and business premises, vehicles and bank lockers and seize the account books, stocks and valuables.
· They can also u/s 1 32A, requisition books of accounts and valuables seized by other government departments for investigation under the Income Tax Act.
Assessee rights during IT raid
1. It is the duty of the raiding officers to keep two independent witnesses from the locality as panchats.
2. if there are kids they must be allowed to go to school.
· IT sleuths, can however, look inside the school bags.
· The raids can only start between sunrise and sunset. However they can continue, and do, for 48 hours.
· The assessee has the right to see the search warrant and the identification of the authorised officer.
· The person being raided can insist that the female members in the family be searched by a female.
· The person being raided has to give his statement during or after the raid. Silence usually does not pay as it leads to an adverse inference against him/her.
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