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Income tax summons issued against Suzuki officials

The Income Tax department has issued summons against all the senior Suzuki Motor Corporation employees and nominees in Maruti Udyog Limited, including MUL chairman Y Saito, for evading tax to the tune of over Rs 500 million.

The ITD has unearthed that Japanese employees in Maruti have not been paying tax to the Indian government since the formation of the company, a senior IT department official said today.

''In this regard, we have issued summons to all the senior Japanese employees who are representing Suzuki in the company. We will now grill them and take all necessary action against them,'' the official added.

The official further stated that the IT department had informed Y Saito, who was in New Delhi on Friday, about the survey which they would be conducting at MUL's factory and corporate office. ''We had asked him to be there as we had to ask a few questions. But he, instead, quietly ran away to his hotel and from there to the airport and took the first flight out of India. This just confirms our doubts that there are some irregularities which he is trying to hide. But how long can he hide?''

Saito was in town to attend the board meeting scheduled for today.

According to the official, some of the Suzuki representatives in MUL are being paid huge salaries and they had not been paying tax or even complying to tax deduction at source till 1995. ''Since 1995, the officials have been declaring just 25 per cent of their salary while the remainder was going unaccounted. For over ten years, the company has not been declaring the salaries and not been paying taxes,'' the official alleged.

"The main issue arising here is that when a company is earning a lot from India and in a partnership with the Indian government, why can not it pay taxes and make proper declarations? We will not let this go on,'' the official stated.

Terming the Japanese employees in MUL to be the main culprits of tax evasion, the official said, Suzuki representatives are now trying to ''hire legal pundits to get the out of the tight spot they are in.''

The survey, which had commenced on Friday at around 1100 hrs, continued till the wee hours this morning. The survey was conducted under Section 133-A of the IT Act to assess the amount of evasion.

Maruti is the leading manufacturer of passenger cars in the country with a turnover of over Rs 81 billion. This year, faced with increased competition and a major recession, the company is expecting its turnover to drop by around seven per cent.

UNI

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