It looked like the Tiger Zinda Hai actress was in hot water for a while. When tax officers chanced upon the laptop of a Matrix - which is the talent management firm that handles Katrina’s account - employee, they had found a computer spreadsheet with mentioned a cheque payment of Rs.2.07 crore and a cash payment of Rs.58 lakh. The department suspected that the payment to Katrina had been split between white and black money.

Taxmen, who are on the hunt to nail those dealing in undisclosed cash, have their eyes open for black money transactions which seek to evade tax. However, the tax tribunal, in its verdict, declared that the spreadsheet was not direct evidence. It is learnt that the documents and the laptop belonged to Sandhya Ramchandra, who worked for Matrix, and the IT department had taken possession of the same during the course of a search. Stars like Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and, up until recently, Salman Khan are clients of Matrix, which is run by Reshma Shetty.

In Katrina’s case, while she had acknowledged receiving the cheque amount of Rs.2.07 crore, the evaluation sheet found from Sandhya Ramchandra’s laptop was not proof that the cash amount of Rs.58 lakh had been moved from Matrix to the actress.

This is not Katrina’s first run-in with the IT department. Back in 2011, her home had been raided by the IT department, for suspected tax evasion and for allegedly concealing actual income while filing tax returns. At that time, Katrina was not at home when the searches began but she had returned immediately and insisted that her chartered accountant accompany her. Apparently, Katrina had even broken down in front of the officials.

After the searches proved inconclusive, Kat had addressed the issue at an event where she said, “I guess they are just doing their job and I have a clean chit now. They have every right to find out about things they doubt and I tried my best to cooperate with them.”
Time to get a little more careful, we suggest…