Two personal computer-related companies affiliated with Aum Shinrikyo failed to declare some 700 million yen in taxable income in 1997 and 1998, sources said Tuesday.

The Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau is believed to have ordered the companies to pay about 700 million yen in income tax, including penalties and consumption tax.

The payment being demanded by the tax bureau represents the first back-tax to be collected from an Aum-affiliated company as a result of failure to declare taxable income, the sources said.

Two personal computer-related companies affiliated with Aum Shinrikyo failed to declare some 700 million yen in taxable income in 1997 and 1998, according to the sources.

The two companies are believed to have told the tax bureau that they were in the red, which would exempt them from having to pay income.

One of the two firms failed to declare income in its business year that ended in April 1998, and the other failed to declare income in its business year that ended in June the same year, the sources said.

The two companies are located in Tokyo's Akihabara district. One is a personal computer sales company called Poseidon, and the other is a computer parts wholesaler called SBR.

The presidents and employees of the two firms, which were established around 1995, are Aum members, according to police sources.

They closed their shops after the tax bureau began investigating them in June, the sources said.

Poseidon tried to conceal income by having its customers deposit payments into bank accounts opened under a separate company's name.

The tax bureau regards the company's action as tax evasion.

SBR, from which Poseidon bought computer parts, is believed to have failed to declare part of its sales.

The two concerns had been able to declare their deficits over the past five years as losses, the sources said.

But as a result of refusing to submit their account books to the tax bureau during a tax audit, the deficits the companies had logged as losses came to be considered taxable income, the sources said.

They had also been granted income tax deductions on the amount of consumption tax they had paid on purchases. But they have now have to pay those taxes as well.

Computer software companies affiliated with Aum, which now calls itself Aleph, were recently reported to have produced software for a number of government offices and major companies.

Aum founder Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, and other members of the cult have been convicted and are on trial for murder and other charges in connection with the March 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system and other crimes.