New Delhi: Have you also heard that the Income Tax Department will now have access to your Whatsapp chats? The proposed Income Tax Bill 2025 allows tax officials to access digital platforms like WhatsApp, email and social media. If this bill is passed, your private chats, cloud storage and even encrypted messages can come under the scan of tax officials to check tax evasion. On this, the government says that this step is necessary to stop tax evasion, but it will raise questions about privacy.

Why is a new bill being introduced?

The Income Tax Bill 2025 is now being introduced to replace the Income Tax Act 1961. The government believes that the existing laws were made according to the old times, which are not compatible with today’s digital technology. Therefore, some changes are being made in it so that tax officials will have digital access.

What changes can be made?

The new bill may include email servers, social media accounts, online investment and trading accounts, cloud storage and platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, email in virtual digital space. If a person does not give access to his digital accounts such as email, WhatsApp to tax officials, then under the new bill, the officials can bypass the security and access your data.

Tax officials will keep an eye

According to media reports, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has admitted that messages found on WhatsApp and other encrypted platforms have revealed tax evasion and unaccounted wealth. The definition of undeclared income has been further expanded in this bill. Sitharaman highlighted that such provisions are not new and currently exist under Section 132 of the IT Act, 1961. If any person discusses such transactions on WhatsApp or any other social media platform, then he will also be under the surveillance of tax officials.

WhatsApp and Telegram

For information, let us tell you that it has been clearly stated in the bill that when and how tax officials can access digital data. But companies like WhatsApp and Telegram use end-to-end encryption due to which no third person can read your chats. So, it is not clear yet whether the government is planning to break this encryption or will just use the device data.