Breaking ….Ex IRS officer reveals whether Modi can bring back the black money or not.Find out what he said…..

Breaking ….Ex  IRS officer reveals whether Modi can bring back the black money or not.Find out what he said…..

Awdhesh Singh is an Ex-IRS Officer .who is an alumni of IIT.He was asked a Question regarding the Black money on Quora.

The question asked by fellow Quoran - Why isn't Modi bringing back the trillions of black money deposited in swiss bank as he promised?

Answer by Awdhesh Singh -Let us first understand how the myth of Trillion Dollar black money was created in India.

 R Vaidyanathan, Professor of Finance at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and a visiting faculty at Manchester Business School delivered a lecture in August 2010 on the topic “Black Money in Indian Economy”. In this lecture he claimed Indian black money worth 1.4 trillion US Dollar (over Rs 70 lakh crore) way over India’s gross domestic product of Rs 43 lakh crore for 2007-08 – was deposited in various foreign tax havens. There were no supporting evidences for his claim, yet it was taken to be true by many Indians and most political parties.

The fact is that no one knows for sure the quantity of black money that is deposited in foreign banks by Indians. However the preliminary findings, including those documents given by the Swiss Bankers Association and the Government of Switzerland, reveal that these exaggerated claims are false and fabricated, and the total amount held in all Swiss bank accounts by citizens of India is about US$2 billion or approximately 13,600 Crores. Hence, the black money in Swiss bank has to be much lower than this amount since all the money deposited in foreign banks can’t be black money.

It is nearly impossible to find out the exact amount of black money deposited in foreign countries since Indian agencies have no power or access to relevant original documents of those countries . Since you don’t have the reliable data, there is no point speculating over the figure.

Narendra Modi Government has, however, done its best to bring back black money deposited in foreign countries to India. These steps include:-

1.      Constitution of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Black Money under Chairmanship and Vice-Chairmanship of two former Judges of Hon’ble Supreme Court,

2.      Enactment of a comprehensive law – ‘The Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015’ to deal specifically with black money stashed abroad,

3.      Constitution of Multi-Agency Group (MAG) consisting of officers of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) for investigation of revelations in Panama paper leaks,

4.      Proactively engaging with foreign governments with a view to facilitating and enhancing the exchange of information under Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs)/Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs)/Multilateral Conventions,

5.      Proactively furthering global efforts to combat tax evasion/black money, inter alia, by joining the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement in respect of Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) and having information sharing arrangement with USA under its Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA),

6.      Renegotiation of DTAAs with other countries to bring the Article on Exchange of Information to International Standards and expanding India’s treaty network by signing new DTAAs and TIEAs with many jurisdictions to facilitate the exchange of information and to bring transparency,

7.      Enabling attachment and confiscation of property equivalent in value held within the country where the property/proceeds of crime is taken or held outside the country by amending the Prevention of Money-laundering Act, 2002 through the Finance Act, 2015,

8.      Enactment of the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016 to amend the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 1988 with a view to, inter alia, enabling confiscation of Benami property and prosecution of benamidar and the beneficial owner,

9.      Initiation of the information technology based ‘Project Insight’ for strengthening the non-intrusive, information driven approach for improving tax compliance, and

10.  Launching of ‘Operation Clean Money’ on 31st January 2017 for collection, collation and analysis of information on cash transactions, extensive use of information technology and data analytics tools for identification of high risk cases, expeditious e-verification of suspect cases and enforcement actions in appropriate cases, which include searches, surveys, enquiries, assessment of income, levy of taxes, penalties, etc. and filing of prosecution complaints in criminal courts, wherever applicable.

Hence it cannot be denied that all-around sincere efforts have been taken by the Modi government for tackling the black money issue and the results will come in time, not over-night as is being expected by many, since many legal issues involved with it are to be addressed suitably.

Source:Quora

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