New Delhi, March 4 -- On 13 February, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced the much-awaited bill to replace the existing Income-Tax Act, 1961. Among the changes proposed in the Income-Tax Bill, 2025, a significant one that cannot be overlooked is the extensive power granted to tax authorities to carry out searches of tax evaders.

The bill has introduced the term 'virtual digital space' in the provisions related to search and seizure actions. The definition of virtual digital space is rather broad and expressly includes email servers, social media accounts, online investment accounts, trading accounts, banking accounts, websites used to store details of ownership of assets, remote servers or cloud servers, and digital applicatio...