New Delhi: Indian Parliament will take up next week the black money bill, India Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday asserting that countries world over plan to put in place a mechanism for automatic exchange of information on any transaction from 2017.
“Next week, I intend to take up before Parliament the law with regard to taxation of undisclosed assets and incomes abroad,” he said at the ‘Enforcement Day’ function organised by the Directorate of Enforcement.
The government in March introduced ‘The Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets (Imposition of Tax) Bill, 2015’ which provides for heavy penalty and stiff punishment of up to 10 years for stashing unaccounted funds abroad.
There will also be a window to help persons having such funds abroad to come clean by paying tax and penalty.
Jaitley said the government has been taken steps to unearth black money stashed abroad.
“There are large number of cases…prosecutions against those offenders have been filed in last few months. The assessment of hundreds of those cases have been completed. 121 prosecutions have been filed by tax Department against them,” he said.
With the international community including G-20 leaders taking various initiatives, it would become difficult for people to hide wealth within couple of years, he added.
Jaitley said India is foremost among a large number of countries that are taking interest in the G-20 initiative on automatic transmission of information with regard to monetary transaction.
“By 2017, the target is that all transactions would become transparent. Each country would go out of way to cooperate with us… By 2017, we are going to make it extremely risky for anybody to have unlawful assets or unlawful transaction of money,” he said.
The Finance Minister said that although every individual and business entity in a liberalised economic environment is required to take a “judgement call”, it would be better to “go straight” when the tax rates are reasonable. (PTI)