NEW DELHI: As much as ₹65,250 crore of black money was declared during the four-month compliance window of the Income Declaration Scheme that ended on September 30, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday.
Jaitley said 64,275 declarations were made in the four-month window and this figure could go up once all the declarations filed online and manually are compiled.
The money declared totals ₹65,250 crore, of which 45 percent would accrue to the government as tax and penalty.
The government had provided illegal income and asset holders a one-time opportunity to come clean by declaring their black money under the four-month window and pay 45 per cent tax and penalty.
Reiterating that the one-time window was not an amnesty scheme like 1997 one, Jaitley said the tax collected in the 1997 Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS) was ₹ 9,760 crore with an average declaration of ₹7 lakh.
The tax collected from the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS) 2016 will go into the Consolidated Fund of India and will be used for the larger welfare of people, he added.
Briefing reporters on the scheme, which was available from June 1 till the midnight of September 30, the finance minister said the tax authorities were still tabulating the declarations, both in physical and electronic form.
“So this (declarations) could be revised upward once the full tabulation takes place,” Jaitley said.
“Roughly, the declarations work out to ₹1 crore per declarant. Some will be higher, some will be lower,” he said, but ruled out any revelation of the names of the people who have availed of the scheme.
“We won’t give any specific information on tax declarants.”