With just nine days to go before the closure of the compliance window under the Income Tax Declaration Scheme (IDS), 2016 (the scheme), the Income Tax Department has reiterated that information contained in a valid declaration will be confidential and shall not be shared.

The scheme is open for declarations up to September 30, 2016. Those declaring unaccounted wealth will have to pay 45% tax plus penalty.

It also stated that in respect of declarations filed with the Commissioner of Income Tax, Centralised Processing Centre (CPC), Bengaluru, the declaration shall not be shared even with the jurisdictional Principal Commissioner and payments made under the scheme shall not be visible to the jurisdictional officers.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said the declaration filed with jurisdictional Principal Commissioner shall not be shared with any authority within or outside the department including the jurisdictional assessing officer.

Further, the payments under the scheme shall neither be reflected in 26AS statement nor can be viewed by the assessing officer in the online tax accounting system (OLTAS) of the department in the interest of confidentiality.