The income tax (I-T) department has sent notices to over 1,100 professionals who have earned money outside their regular job and have not declared it in their income tax returns (ITRs), The Economic Times (ET) reported.
It added that the I-T department has found that in some cases of moonlighting, the earnings were higher than the regular salary. Several of these payments were received from overseas and many were made online.
A senior official was quoted in the report as saying, “We have found a large number of instances of information technology (IT), accounting and management professionals who were getting payment monthly or quarterly from two or more companies but were declaring income only from their full-time job in their income tax returns.”
In the first phase, notices were sent to people with an average undeclared payment between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh. Most of these instances were from 2019 to 2021. The department is yet to analyse the data from 2021-22.
Moonlighting became more popular during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially in IT companies.
What is moonlighting?
Moonlighting refers to holding a second job outside of regular working hours. Most companies in India prohibit staff from taking up additional jobs over concerns like conflicts of interest, job performance, or misuse of an employer’s resources.
Several companies accept moonlighting but many others like Infosys have strictly restricted their employees to not indulge in this practice.
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