Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said Indian government agencies have detected nearly Rs 49,000 crore of undeclared income and collected an extra Rs 34,600 crore of extra taxes. About Rs 15,000 cr was discovered in the last 18 months, Mukherjee said in an apparent attempt to mollify angry courts, a day before a crucial Supreme Court hearing on the matter.
Mukherjee however refused to reveal the details.
On 19 January, the Supreme Court had asked the government why it was not disclosing the names of Indian citizens who control large sums of money in European banks from 2002 to 2006, despite getting the details from abroad. Mukherjee said the data has been given to the Court in a ‘sealed envelope’.
Estimates of black money in India range from USD 500 billion to USD 1.4 trillion — comparable in size to India’s gross domestic product.
He said necessary provisions have been made in the proposed Direct Tax Code to create legislative framework to check illicit outflows of funds.
