<div><em>Black money, these two words became the buzz words for an election-bound BJP, but what has the Narendra Modi government really done to tackle this menace in the last 15 months. <strong>Suchetana Ray</strong> analyses the issue</em></div><div> </div><div>'Bring back black money' became a war cry as BJP went into the general elections of 2014. The BJP manifesto proudly announced, “The process of bringing back black money to India what belongs to India, will be put in motion on priority”. It further added that a task force will be created for, “tracking down and bringing back black money stashed in foreign banks and offshore accounts”. It has been almost 15 months since the Narendra Modi government took office but a task force is yet to be created, unless BJP wants to take credit for the SIT created and monitored by the Supreme Court. Within weeks of coming to power, this Government was also forced to toe the UPA line as far as revealing black money holders’ names are concerned. It is perhaps easy to occupy Opposition benches and cry hoarse against government policies but Arun Jaitley soon realised how even he is bound by international treaties from sharing account information of Indians.</div><div> </div><div>In the past 15 months, Arun Jailtey has aggressively pushed for the Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets (Imposition of Tax) Bill, for renegotiating Treaties with countries like Mauritius, sending regular emissaries to Switzerland for retrieving information on Indians stashing black money in their “Swiss accounts”. Credit to the finance minister for getting the Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets Bill ready and ratified into an Act. But this Bill popularly known as the Black Money Bill, suffers from several key deficiencies.</div><div> </div><div>While the Bill provides for a compliance window to declare unaccounted money and assets abroad, the caveat is, that those under investigation cannot avail of the benefits of this window. But how do you know if you are being investigated, unless the probe is at an advanced stage and a tax notice has been served? Many in the revenue department say that despite the publicity given to this compliance window they are apprehensive about the response to it. The Bill promises not to use information disclosed through this window in its investigations. But do evaders have such faith in the taxman?</div><div> </div><div>Many experts have pointed out that this Bill lacks vision, as it does not spell out any mechanism to retrieve information on defaulters. This information will depend on the various tax and banking account information exchange treaties that India has with other countries. Many countries have openly expressed their lack of interest in sharing this information with India; the fear is that the identities of the account holders will find their way into front pages of newspapers. The domestic laws of these countries and international obligations force them to be careful about handing over information, case in point Switzerland.</div><div> </div><div>Another controversial point has been the power granted to tax authorities to scrutinize files for past 16 years, a provision that has created huge furore among all and sundry. Shashi Tharoor has criticized this provision saying it recreates the Inspector Raj of the pre-liberalisation days, and some others have warned of the fallout of handing over such unbridled authority to the tax department. The legitimate fear is that this provision can amount to harassment in some cases.</div><div> </div><div>While Arun Jaitley managed to stick, albeit superficially, to the BJP Manifesto promise of bringing a law to tackle black money stashed abroad, the bigger menace of illegitimate generation of money within the country remains unaddressed. </div><div> </div>
