Making a strong statement against the illegal money stashed in foreign accounts abroad, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said that a comprehensive new law will be introduced in the current session of Parliament for effectively dealing with the menace of black money. The proposed law will not only make concealment of income and assets located abroad and evasion of tax on them a prosecutable offence with a punishment of rigorous imprisonment of up to 10 years, it will also attract a penalty of 300 per cent of the tax amount. The offence will be non-compoundable and the offenders won’t be allowed to approach the settlement commission, the Finance Minister said while tabling the Budget 2015-16 in the Lok Sabha. “Recognising the limitations under the existing legislation, we have taken a considered decision to enact a comprehensive new law on black money to specifically deal with such money stashed away abroad. To this end, I propose to introduce a Bill in the current session of Parliament,” Jaitley said. Non-filing of returns or filing of returns with inadequate disclosure of foreign assets will be liable for prosecution with punishment of rigorous imprisonment of up to 7 years, according to the proposed legislation. Further, for domestic black money, a new and more comprehensive Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Bill will be introduced in the current session to enable confiscation of benami property and provide for prosecution. Daksha Baxi, executive director, Khaitan & Co, said, “Such harsh measures should act as a significant deterrent to keeping the illegal monies outside India. Encouraging and facilitating transactions through credit and debit cards and dis-incentivising cash transactions should help in curbing generation of domestic black money, though the details of these provisions need to be examined.” [related-post] The announcement comes amid the raging debate on the so-called Swiss list, which, as reported by The Indian Express, contained 1,195 Indian HSBC clients, double of the 628 names which were provided to the Supreme Court. Last year in May, on the directions of the SC, the government had formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the cases of black money. The SIT has already submitted two reports to the apex court while the scope of probe has been widened with the doubling of the HSBC Swiss list. The BJP-led government has come under attack from the Opposition over not delivering on its promise to bring black money back into the country. Last year’s Lok Sabha elections were centred around the issue of black money, where the then UPA government was pushed to the wall by the BJP on its failure to effectively deal with the issue.
