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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Black money debate: Government agrees to bring white paper

Black money debate: Government agrees to bring white paper

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published Published on Dec 15, 2011   modified Modified on Dec 15, 2011

-The Economic Times

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has said he had directed three institutions - NIPFP, NIFM and NCAER - to come out with a defendable assessment of the quantum of black money stashed away by Indians in foreign banks.

Replying to the discussion on the adjournment motion moved in the House by BJP veteran LK Advani on "the situation arising out black money deposited illegally in foreign banks", Mukherjee declared his readiness to bring out a white paper, as demanded by Advani in his speech.

Later, the motion was defeated by a voice-vote, amid a walkout by the Samajwadi Party. "I will bring out a white paper. I am prepared to give all the information. There is no conflict of interest between our party and your party on the issue,'' Mukherjee said, addressing BJP benches. There was no definitive figure about the amount of black money stashed in foreign banks. "Owing to the position held by me, I cannot indulge in fancy figures.

According to some reports of the Swiss bankers' Association, whose authenticity remains doubtful, the figure was between $1,500 billion and $1,900 billion. The task force set up by BJP put the figure as between $5000 billion and $14,000 billion.

The Global Financial Integrity put the total loss to India because of the outflow of black money from 1948-2008 at $213 billion, which, in the present value, comes to around $462 billion. This figure was assumed after finalising certain parameters,'' the minister said.

The government was constrained on the issue of tracking down black money by international taxation laws, practices and norms. "There is an instrumentality. We can collect bank information only through the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA),'' Mukherjee said, and added that the government had reached 82 such pacts with various countries.

The finance minister maintained that that the issue came to be debated globally only after the London G-20 summit of 2008. It was carried through at Pittsburg and, later, at Cannes.

"At the Cannes summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh strongly pleaded for automatic exchange of tax-related information,'' he said, arguing that there was no dearth of government initiative in this direction. Tax havens, the finance minister pointed out, had doggedly refused to share such information in the absence of DTAA.

"When G-20 countries started exerting pressure, they started negotiating. We are now in the process of finalising treaties with them,'' he said, adding that the government had completed its agreement with Switzerland in September 2010. "Swiss authorities, however, told us they would only offer prospective information. No country of the world, not even the US, France or UK, got information retrospectively,'' the finance minister contended.

He reiterated that the provisions of DTAA barred the government from disclosing taxrelated information. "The French told us specifically that we were bound by the pact,'' he said, referring to the information passed on by Paris on Swiss bank account-holders.

Citing IT laws, Mukherjee pointed out that the Income-Tax Department could only collect taxes from such bank account-holders as tax-evasion was not a criminality. "Do you want the I-T Act to become a penal act? Is there a dearth of stringent laws?'' he wondered.

The Economic Times, 15 December, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/black-money-debate-government-agrees-to-bring-white-paper/articleshow/11113783.cms


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