THE Income Tax investigation into cases revealed
in 'Panama Papers leaks' has led to detection of substantial amounts of
deposits in these foreign accounts. Investigations
have led to filing of 55 prosecution complaints in 24 such cases.
A high level Multi-Agency Group (MAG) has been constituted
for the purpose. So far, the MAG has submitted 5 reports to the Government.
Investigations
based on information received from French Government on Indians holding bank
accounts in HSBC bank in Switzerland has resulted into detection of considerable
amount of undisclosed income. Concealment penalty of about Rs 1282 crores
has also been levied in 159 cases and 164 prosecution complaints have been
filed in 75 cases.
Indo-Swiss Exchange of Information
India and Switzerland have an exchange of information relationship under
the Indo-Swiss Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) and the Indian Competent
Authority regularly pursues all the outstanding cases with Switzerland.
As fighting the menace of Black Money stashed in offshore accounts has been
a key priority area for this Government, to further this goal, the Indian Prime
Minister met with the Swiss President at Geneva on 6th June 2016 and discussed
the need for expeditious exchange of information for combatting tax evasion
together with an early start to negotiations on the Agreement for Automatic
Exchange of Information. As a follow up, India’s Revenue Secretary and Switzerland's
State Secretary for International Financial Matters met in New Delhi on 15.06.2016
and agreed to move towards an early agreement for the implementation of AEOI
between the two countries. It was also decided that experts of both the countries
will meet to further discuss the modalities for the reciprocal bilateral implementation
of AEOI between India and Switzerland with a view to reaching an agreement
at the earliest, possibly by the end of the year. This meeting was conducted
on 5-6th September 2016. The experts from both the sides agreed for the early
implementation of AEOI.
Automatic
Exchange of Information (AEOI)
Automatic Exchange of Information is systematic and periodic transmission
of "bulk" taxpayer information by the source country to the residence country,
which is possible under most of the DTAAs and Multilateral Convention on Mutual
Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters.
On 3rd June 2015, India joined the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement
(MCAA) on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information (AEOI) under
the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) based on the provisions of the Multilateral
Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (Multilateral
Convention). The AEOI standards are very wide in scope and oblige the treaty
partners to exchange wide range of financial information after collecting the
same from financial institutions in their country/jurisdictions including information
about the ultimate controlling persons and beneficial owners of entities. Till
now, 84 countries have signed MCAA for AEOI. 101 countries have committed for
AEOI. From 2017 onwards, 54 countries will start exchanging information automatically.
And from 2018 onwards, it is expected that another 47 countries will start
exchanging information automatically.
|
