No tax waiver for disclosing illegal assets: Arun Jaitley

The priority of the BJP government, when it came to power, was the retrieval of the illegal assets of Indians in foreign banks and also bringing back the black money. Time has passed but yet nothing concrete has been decided on this matter as of yet. An ambitious project titled & lsquo Income Declaration Scheme' was launched to create awareness about the issue. On Sunday, the Finance Minister came out with certain clarifications too, regarding IDS. Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has said that the central government's ambitious 'Income Declaration Scheme' (IDS) is for disclosure of unaccounted wealth and does not provide for waiver of tax or penalty amount. Jaitley was speaking at an event organized to spread awareness about IDS at Gujarat University convention hall on Sunday. This was the first IDS awareness event undertaken by Jaitley in the country. & quot Unlike past schemes, under the IDS a taxpayer has to pay penalty and cannot ask for reassessment of earlier valuation. If we allow this, it will be putting a premium on dishonesty and also be unfair to honest taxpayers,& quot Jaitley said. The Centre had launched IDS last month to provide an opportunity for voluntary disclosure to those owning black money. Taxpayers availing the scheme will have to pay 45% tax (30% tax, 7.5% penalty and 7.5% krishi cess). Under the scheme, assets will be assessed according to their market value on June 1, 2016. The disclosed income will get exemption from property tax and the person will not be questioned under income tax or property tax laws. The Union finance minister said the first thing that the Modi government did was to implement the Supreme Court directive on black money and set up an SIT with two retired Supreme Court judges. & quot Our assessment in cases related to HSBC, Geneva and Liechtenstein are over as prosecution has been initiated. Moreover, with more information emerging from Panama Papers, the government is investigating further,& quot Jaitley said. He added that under the voluntary disclosure scheme for offshore accounts on which the government had levied 40% tax, assets worth Rs 4,500 crore had been declared. & quot In whichever country I visit, I first ask about the tax structure and evasion rate. In many countries, tax evasion is unimaginable because of the stiff laws. In comparison, India's tax rates are very reasonable,& quot Jaitley said. He added that in the future, it will be difficult to generate black money. & quot We have created a consensus among G-20 countries for sharing of information. These countries are responsible for 85% of the world economy,& quot Jaitley said. He added that the Indian government would be able to get real-time information on remittances by 2017 as a result of the FATCA agreement signed with the US.

OUR TAKE

All this can be seen as big talk. Many complain that even though talks have been going on in the name of black money, zilch results have yet to come out of it. Although the government had announced big plans for the future relating to the retrieval of black money, nothing has materialized yet. The promises of Modi and various other BJP leaders echo in the ears of many Indians who, looking at the present scenario, have been fooled into believing that lakhs of rupees would be in their bank accounts by the end of the BJP government' reign. But with more stricter tax evasion rules and regulations and an eagle's eye on the money going in and out of the country, the current situation can be improved a lot.