Black money Bill to be taken up in Parliament next week: Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said the government will next week take up for consideration the new black money bill in the Lok Sabha to effectively deal with the menace of unaccounted wealth stashed abroad.

“Next week, I intend to take up before Parliament the law with regard to taxation of undisclosed assets and incomes abroad,” Mr. Jaitley said at the ‘Enforcement Day’ function organised by the Directorate of Enforcement.

The government in March introduced ‘The Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets (Imposition of Tax) Bill, 2015’ which provides for heavy penalty and stiff punishment of up to 10 years for stashing unaccounted funds abroad.

There will also be a window to help persons having such funds abroad to come clean by paying tax and penalty.

Mr. Jaitley said the government has been taken steps to unearth black money stashed abroad.

“There are large number of cases...prosecutions against those offenders have been filed in last few months. The assessment of hundreds of those cases have been completed. 121 prosecutions have been filed by tax Department against them,” Mr. Jaitley said.

With the international community including G-20 leaders taking various initiatives, it would become difficult for people to hide wealth within couple of years.