PANAJI
After the biz bonanza of the Christmas-New Year week, dozens of nightclubs and up-market restaurants in North Goa, have had unfamiliar visitors knocking at their doors since Tuesday morning “ the dreaded taxmen.
Sleuths of the Income Tax department drawn from multiple outstation locations conducted raids on dozens of pubs, restaurants and nightclubs and even residences of some of their owners since Tuesday morning.
The raids were aimed at unearthing the unaccounted cash netted by these businesses who did roaring business in the peak season period leading to Christmas and New Year.
The I-T department has not made any official statement on the searches it conducted in North Goa but sources said, that the exercise was aimed at unearthing enormous amounts of business transacted by these establishments during the Christmas-New Year week in cash and unaccounted.
Most of these businesses do not maintain proper books of accounts and fudge their financials to underreport their revenues which are mostly raked in cash, the I-T source said.
He added that the hospitality business experienced unprecedented turnovers with footfalls recording an all-time high but it does not reflect in the numbers presented by most of these outlets, prompting them to resort to the raids since Tuesday.
The I-T department has been keeping a close watch on the hospitality trade in North Goa for several years now and its teams often swoop down on some of the better known nightclubs to conduct searches, suspecting under-reporting in their tax returns. It has so far not released either a list of establishments searched or named anyone as yet.
