NEW DELHI: In the biggest ever blackmoney disclosure, at least Rs 650 billion of undisclosed assets were declared in the one-time compliance window, yielding Rs 300 billion in taxes to the government.
While the blackmoney declarations will go up once all the online and manual filings of undisclosed assets filed at the end of the four-month window on September 30 are compiled, the government will get nearly Rs 147 billion or half of the due taxes, this fiscal.
Announcing the declarations made under the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS), Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said 64,275 declarants disclosed an amount of Rs 650 billion.
“Some disclosures have not been tabulated… This figure could be revised upward once the final tabulation is done,” he told a news conference here.
Government had offered a one-time chance to holders of income and assets that had illegally escaped taxes, to come clean by paying a tax and penalty of 45 per cent.
On the declarations compiled so far, the government will get Rs 300 billion in tax and penalty. The declarants can pay this amount in two instalments up to September 30, 2017. Half or Rs 150 billion will accrue this fiscal.
Last year, under a similar scheme for foreign black money holders, 644 declarations of undisclosed foreign income and assets were received, and just Rs 24.28 billion was collected in taxes.
“We will maintain secrecy of these declarations,” Jaitley said, adding the tax would accrue to the Consolidated Fund of India and would be used for welfare of public.
The average declaration per declarant comes to Rs 10 million.