Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Warns Black Money Holders Of Consequences

New Delhi: Asking domestic black money holders to take advantage of the ongoing scheme to come clean, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said those who have not yet declared their undisclosed foreign assets will face the consequences.

"One of the objectives behind 2015 black money law was (providing) an opportunity to assessees to comply...some people made use of that opportunity and I can tell you with almost certainty that those who did not, have taken a big risk because this is one area where world is opening out now with G-20 initiative, US domestic law," Mr Jaitley said at an event organised by Ficci here.

Finding out details is not difficult once there is a real-time sharing of information, he said, adding, "Those who have missed the bus certainly have missed a lot."

Speaking on the occasion, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said there will not be a second window for the disclosure of foreign black money.

"I don't think the intension of the government ever was to reopen that. Having closed the date, one should not reopen the window. That I think would be FM's view also," Mr Adhia said when asked if the government is considering to provide another window for declaration of foreign black money.

With regard to the Income Disclosure Scheme (IDS), Mr Jaitley said the government wants more and more people to use this.

The four-month window under the IDS 2016, which closes on September 30, allows domestic black money holders to declare their ill-gotten wealth by paying a tax and penalty totaling 45 per cent.

"This Income Disclosure Scheme is part of the strategy where we want people to clean up their books," he said.

Hinting that the tax department has information about the black money, Mr Jaitley said the technology is a facilitator even to taxmen.

Detection of tax violation will get easier with improvement in technology, he said, adding that implementation of GST (Goods and Services Tax) will also help check evasion.

Talking about various tax initiatives, Mr Jaitley said the government has sorted out a few cases of retrospective taxation.

"We are trying to maintain stability of tax policy and one of the efforts is that corporate tax must be brought down to globally competitive rate because assessees world over are going to look over before investing," he said.

The government proposes to bring down corporate tax rate in a phased manner from the existing 30 per cent to 25 per cent over a period of four years beginning this fiscal year.

On the tax rates under IDS scheme, Mr Jaitley said it is not easy to design such schemes and keeping ethical and legitimate considerations in mind, the rates under the scheme have been designed.

Mr Jaitley further said the relationship between the taxmen and the assessee is undergoing change though it is still a work in progress.

"The change will be visible in future. Apprehensions and fears need to be eliminated and discretions will have to disappear," he said.

On the gold monetisation scheme, the finance minister said the scheme is picking up. 

To make the gold monetisation scheme more attractive, the government has allowed investors to redeem the deposits in gold also.

For redemption of the deposit in gold, an administrative charge of 0.2 per cent of the notional redemption amount would be levied from the depositor in Indian rupees.