The thing is, the Income Tax department is about to get a lot more invasive starting April 1, 2026. Specifically, the new Income Tax Bill, 2025 is swapping old-school raids for a “digital-first” approach. Tax officers won’t just be looking for cash in your cupboards anymore.
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They’ll have the legal green light to dive into what the bill calls your “virtual digital space.” This includes everything from your private emails and DMs to your cloud storage and crypto wallets. And then the search follows.
Here’s the kicker: the law explicitly gives officers the power to override your access codes. Specifically, if you refuse to hand over a password or a PIN during a sanctioned search, they are now legally authorized to bypass that encryption.
They can dig through your social media profiles, online trading dashboards, and even casual messages if they think there’s a link to tax evasion. Let’s be real, the boundary between “financial data” and “personal life” is getting incredibly thin, or nothing.
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But don’t panic just yet if you’re a regular, law-abiding taxpayer. The government—and even PIB Fact Check—is stressing that this isn’t a “blanket surveillance” tool. Specifically, officers can’t just scroll through your DMs for fun or during a routine audit.
They still need a formal “reason to believe” that you’re hiding serious money. This power is strictly for Search and Survey operations targeting large-scale tax evasion and black money. And then there are the privacy critics, who argue that this level of access is totally disproportionate, or nothing.
The situation is a bit of a legal tightrope. While the government says they are just catching up to a world where money has moved online, privacy advocates worry about the lack of judicial oversight. Specifically, there’s no requirement for a judge’s warrant before they crack open your digital life.
Consequently, if you find yourself under a formal search, your entire digital footprint is basically fair game. Specifically, the rollout is set for the start of the next financial year, so the “digital teeth” are coming whether we’re ready or not.
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