More than 2.5 lakh high-value property transactions worth over Rs 3 lakh crore across north-western India have come under the scanner of the Income Tax Department, with Gurugram and Faridabad emerging as the biggest suspected hubs of tax evasion linked to property registrations.
According to officials, the department has carried out surveys and spot verifications in over 40 tehsils across six states after detecting widespread discrepancies in property registration records, including missing, incomplete or incorrect Permanent Account Number (PAN) details in real estate transactions.
Officials said nearly 80 per cent of the suspicious transactions were concentrated in Gurugram’s Wazirabad tehsil and Faridabad’s Ballabhgarh tehsil, which witnessed massive volumes of property buying and selling in recent years amid the NCR real estate boom.
The Income Tax Department’s Directorate of Intelligence and Criminal Investigation reportedly conducted extensive checks in Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh over the past year. Investigators matched property registration data with Income Tax Returns (ITRs) of buyers and sellers and found large-scale reporting gaps that made tax verification difficult.
Sources indicated that surveys conducted in Wazirabad tehsil alone pointed towards suspected annual tax evasion exceeding Rs 5,000 crore. Investigators found several cases where PAN information of buyers and sellers was either not entered during registrations or was filled incorrectly, preventing authorities from effectively tracking high-value transactions.
The department has also found missing PAN details during checks conducted across 93 tehsils in 22 districts. Since furnishing PAN details is mandatory for property transactions above Rs 30 lakh under Section 285BA(1) of the Income Tax Act, officials have now initiated corrective measures and written to district administrations to rectify pending and defective records.
Instead of immediately issuing notices, the department is currently adopting its “Nudge” strategy — a non-intrusive compliance mechanism under which taxpayers are being informed via email about mismatches between their property transactions and tax filings. Property buyers and sellers are being given an opportunity to voluntarily revise their ITRs before stricter enforcement action is initiated.
The development has triggered concern across the NCR real estate sector, particularly in Gurugram and Faridabad where soaring collector rates, luxury housing growth and large-scale land transactions have sharply increased the volume of high-value property registrations over the past two years.
