With the current financial year drawing to a close, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has asked the Income Tax (I-T) department to speed up select black money and tax evasion probe cases, which require cooperation from foreign agencies under existing bilateral treaties.
Officials said the CBDT has asked the taxman to send to it all such cases for exchange of information that are getting "time barred" by March 31, the last day of the 2015-16 fiscal.
According to an official instruction, officials of the department have been asked to send these requests latest by the month-end so that they can be scrutinised, formatted and sent abroad before the end of March.
A special wing in the CBDT, Foreign Tax and Tax Research, is mandated to process these requests sent by various regions of the tax department from across the country in pursuance of their respective probes under IT laws.
"A good number of cases of tax evasion and black money are pending investigation and instructions have been specially issued for those cases that are getting time barred by the 2015-16 fiscal. Once the time barring period gets over, it becomes legally untenable for the department to take prosecution action against defaulters and evaders," a senior official said.