LS to consider black money bill today

Over one trillion dollars of unaccounted funds lying in accounts outside India

GN Bureau | May 11, 2015


#black money   #income tax   #arun jaitley   #finance minister   #Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets Bill  

The black money bill is likely to be taken up for consideration in the Lok Sabha on Monday. The legislation, known officially Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets Bill, provides for heavy penalties and imprisonment of up to 10 years for stashing unaccounted funds abroad. The government had introduced the bill in March.

India has no official estimate of illegal money stashed away overseas, but unofficial assessments put it somewhere between $466 billion and $1.4 trillion.

As part of overall monitoring of income tax evasion, last month, the government had revised and added more queries to the form that filed by the income tax assessee (ITR forms). It had sought details of all the bank accounts and money spent on foreign trips. However, after much hue and cry, the government is likely to revise the ITR forms.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley had said early this month that "next week, I intend to take up before Parliament the law with regard to taxation of undisclosed assets and incomes abroad."

"I think, for every assessee, every person in the commercial business also, it is a judgement call that in a liberal economic environment of reasonable and lower taxation rates, 'go straight'," Jaitley had said.

"And, therefore, if you transact within the limits of law, it is much safer. If you breach it, gone are the days where offences would go undetected," he added.

Jaitley has also warned corporates not to take unfair advantage of the liberalised tax environment. He said the world is moving towards a more transparent regime that would remove the veil of secrecy from unlawful transactions.

In March 2011, the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, National Council of Applied Economic Research and National Institute of Financial Management were given the task of estimating unaccounted income and wealth inside and outside the country.

Jaitley told the Rajya Sabha earlier this week that the government was examining the reports of three institutes on the matter.

Comments

 

Other News

When police data becomes the algorithm

For decades, policing has followed a familiar sequence: a crime occurs, the police respond, an investigation produces records and those records become part of the institutional memory of the criminal justice system. Artificial intelligence is beginning to alter that sequence. Instead of merely recording

Before India voted, the framers worried about the referee

“We are making a Constitution forever and not only for today.” Shibban Lal Saksena said this in the Constituent Assembly on June 15, 1949. He was warning that a ruling party might one day choose a loyalist to run India’s elections. Seventy-seven years later, the Supreme Court is wrestli

Delhi moves to real-time traffic management

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by prime minister Narendra Modi, has approved implementation of the ITMS Project by Delhi Police at an estimated cost of Rs.1,789.52 crore, inclusive of taxes. The project will cover 42 identified traffic corridors and will be implemented in three

MDR on UPI: Can sustainability come without weakening the network?

The extraordinary transaction volumes and value (₹29.82 Lakh crore in August 2026 alone) of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) have made it not only an Indian success story, but a global one. In 2024, UPI accounted for nearly 49% of the world’s real-time payment transaction volume, with more th

The Xi-Trump summit: The unending rivalry

Diplomacy is akin to an art, wherein the summitry, conflict resolution and negotiations form apt constituents of the entire context of deal making and “playing for keeps” in the international arena. The Xi-Trump summit in Washington last week, in which the American president broke all conside

“Indians, yet treated like outsiders”

Moving to Delhi-NCR for education can be an exciting experience for students from Northeast India. It gives us a chance to meet new people, experience a different culture and become more independent. But living away from home also comes with challenges that people who have not experienced them may not al

Upcoming Conferences



-->

Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter