India has acted upon credible information on money stashed abroad, says Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

Tribune News Service

Shubhadeep Choudhury
New Delhi, April 6

Undisclosed income of more than Rs 8,468 crore has been brought to tax and penalty of more than Rs 1,294 crore has been levied as on January 31 on account of deposits made in unreported foreign bank accounts in the HSBC cases, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed the Rajya Sabha.

In her written reply to a question asked by CPI member Binoy Viswam, Sitharaman said that as on January 31, investigations conducted in the cases revealed by ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) led to detection of more than Rs 11,010 crore of credits in undisclosed foreign accounts.

Total undisclosed credits amounting to Rs 20,353 crore have been detected with respect to more than 900 India-linked entities in the Panama and Paradise Paper Leaks as on January 31. Taxes collected in this connection amount to Rs 154.98 crore, Sitharaman further said.

The Finance Minister asserted that Central government has taken proactive and effective steps whenever any credible information has been received with regard to black money stashed abroad, whether in HSBC cases, ICIJ cases or Paradise Papers or Panama Papers cases. 

The government has constituted multi agency groups in relevant cases, arranged definitive information from foreign jurisdictions, brought the black money to tax under relevant law and launched prosecutions against the offenders, the Finance Minister said.

Sitharaman also informed that notices under section 10(1) of the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 have been issued in 592 cases involving undisclosed foreign assets and income of over Rs 39,620 crore.

The FM added 648 disclosures involving undisclosed foreign assets worth Rs 4,164 crore were made in the one-time three months compliance window, which closed on September 30, 2015, under the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015. The amount collected by way of tax and penalty in such cases was about Rs 2,476 crore.

India has also implemented Automatic Exchange of Information based on the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) and accordingly has started receiving from 2017 onwards, financial account information of Indian tax residents in other countries. India has also entered into an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) with USA in 2015 for sharing of financial account information on automatic basis.

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