'No official estimates of black money stashed abroad': Centre

Hyderabad: Union minister of state for finance Anurag Singh Thakur on Monday told parliament that there is no official estimation regarding the amount of ‘black money’ within the country and stashed abroad’.

The minister was responding to a question on the assessment of black money and its circulation, raised by parliamentarian Pratap Simha.

However, the ruling party did place the statistics on the table. According to the minister, the government had commissioned a study on estimation of unaccounted income and wealth inside and outside the country, through National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and National Institute of Financial Management (NIFM).

According to the report, post demonetization, from November 2016 to March 2017, Income tax searches were conducted across 900 groups(companies) leading to the seizure of Rs. 900 crores, including cash of Rs. 636 crores and admission of undisclosed income of Rs.7961 crores.

And during the same period, 8239 surveys were conducted leading to the detection of undisclosed income of Rs.6745 crores, the minister said.

On action taken, he said, the income tax department issued emails to persons who had deposited a substantial amount of cash but had not filed their return of income till the due date of filing. As a result, Returns were filed by 2.09 lakh such identified non-filers and they paid self-assessment tax of Rs. 6,531 Crore, the report said.

“Appropriate actions against evasion of taxes/black money under direct tax laws include searches, surveys, enquiries, assessment of income, levy of taxes, penalties and filing of prosecution complaints in criminal courts, wherever applicable. The value of assets seized by the Income Tax Department in the search and seizure actions during the last three is around Rs 4046.25 Crore”, Thakur added.