After Raja and ISRO, the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) has chosen a much more glamorous victim for its latest enquiry.
According to the audit report released today, most Indian film personalities and producers are less than completely truthful when it comes to declaring their income and paying tax.
The CAG came to the conclusion by examining the income tax filings of several persons associated with a particular movies and then comparing them to each other.
Among the people it found had declarations different from what their film producers filed are famous Telugu actress ‘Charmee’ (who declared a larger amount as her fee,) Malayalam actress Kavya Madhavan and Malayalam Director Lal Jose. The last two declared a fraction of their income [as declared by their producer] in their income tax statements, according to the auditor.
The Auditor also found that Smitha Thackeray, bollywood producer and the daughter in law of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray was allowed to escape a tax of more than Rs 62 lakh by letting her incorporate expenses incurred on an unreleased film while calculating her income.
The rules specify that expenses only released films alone qualify for discounts.
Others named include Telugu producers BVSN Prasad and ML Kumar Chowdhary.