New Delhi: Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday launched a new website “Operation Clean Money”, a programme to bring illegal wealth on books.
While launching the Clean Money website, Jaitley said the government’s demonetisation move on 8 November 2016 has accelerated the move towards a digital economy, the number of income tax assessee has gone up and tax revenue too is rising.
Stating that as many as 9.1 million people have come under the tax net, Jaitley said he expects further increase in tax returns going ahead. Post demonetisation, there has been a hike in collection of personal income tax, the finance minister said, adding that the new portal will help honest tax payer.
CBDT chairman Sushil Chandra said there was 22% growth in e-filed returns post demonetisation. As many as 17.92 lakh people were identified for unexplained deposits post demonetisation, he said, adding the tax department has identified one lakh suspected tax avoidance cases.
He also said that an undisclosed income of Rs16,398 crore was identified post demonetisation.
“We identified around 17.92 lakh persons in whose case the cash transactions did not appear in line with the taxpayers’ profiles. And online verifications of these transactions are underway,” Chandra said.
Of the 17.92 lakh, so far 9.72 lakh individuals responded to SMSes and e-mails sent by the income tax department.