The government is ready to take tougher attitude against those companies that understate operations in terms of production or capacity in order to get a relief in advance tax obligations.
There is an added clause in the Collection of Statistics Bill, 2008, passed by Parliament last month, which states that data manipulation by a company to take advantage on tax obligations will attract prison term up to six months if proven.
The Centre had earlier discovered that in many cases the difference between projected output or capacity by a company was much different from actual turn out. While this can also result due to various economic reasons like change in market conditions, government feels that some players may have been intentionally indulging in data manipulations to save on tax liabilities. As a result, the ministry of statistics & programme implementation will cross-check data submitted by companies to trace the culprits.