MINISTER OF THE STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE (SHRI S.S. PALANIMANICKAM)
(a)&(b): No, Sir. The Government has not made any estimation of unaccounted money in various
sectors of economy, in recent times. However, the Government has decided to get a fresh study
conducted on unaccounted income/wealth both inside and outside the country bringing out the
nature of activities engendering money laundering and its ramifications on national security.
The proposal was approved bythe Government in January 2011. The study fs likely to be completed
within a time frame of eighteen months.
Sector-wise and area-wise details of undisclosed income detected by the Income Tax Department are not
centrally maintained in the Ministry. The Information will have to be collected from field formations
of the Income Tax Department spread in various parts of the country. The time and effort required
for collection of the information may not be commensurate to the objective sought to be achieved.
(c) The Income Tax Department takes several deterrent and punitive steps to unearth unaccounted money and curb
tax evasion. These include scrutiny of returns, surveys, search and seizure action, imposition of penalty and
launching of prosecution in appropriate cases. Information Technology has also been used in a big way in
collection, collation and dissemination of taxpayer information. Tax Information Network (TIN) has been
set up as a depository of important tax related information which can be accessed by the Department. The
basic components of TIN are information relating to Tax Deduction at Source (TDS), payment of taxes and
high value transactions reported in Annual Information Returns (AIR). The Department has set up an Integrated
Taxpayer Data Management System (ITDMS) to electronically coliate information collected from various sources
i.e. Tax Deduction at Source, Electronic Filing of Return, Annual Information Returns, Central Information
Branches (CIB) etc, to create 360 degrees profile of High net-worth assesses. Information received from
Financial Intelligence Unit under the Department of Revenue regarding suspicious transactions from various
banks, insurance companies etc, are also investigated by the Income Tax Department. Further, the Department
has implemented Computer Assisted Selection of Scrutiny (CASS) wherein returns are selected for scrutiny on
the basis of comparison of the information gathered from various sources with the information available and
declarations made by the assesses in the return of income.
(d) No, Sir.
(e) It is not considered practical to stop printing of the notes of the denomination of Rs 500/- and
Rs 1000/- as more notes of smaller denominations will have to be printed to meet the demands of new
currency notes, which is not possible considering the printing capacity and availability of bank
note paper.
