Black Money menace: Centre launches 'Operation Clean Money' portal

New Delhi [India], May 17 (ANI): In an endeavor to fight corruption and black money, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley launched portal of Operation Clean Money here today. The launch took place in presence of senior officers of the Ministry of Finance, Department of Revenue and the Central Board of Direct Taxes. While launching the programme, the Income Tax Department urged all taxpayers and citizens to actively participate in Operation Clean Money for a common cause of building a proud nation, which runs on the strength of the honest taxpayers. The Operation Clean Money was initiated by the Income Tax Department (ITD) on the 31st January, 2017 with the launch of e-verification of large cash deposits made during 9th November to 30th December 2016. In the first batch, around 18 lakh persons were identified in whose case, cash transactions did not appear in line with the tax payer's profile. There has been an encouraging response to the online verification process and more than 9.72 lakh taxpayers submitted their response without visiting Income tax office up to 12th May, 2017. These taxpayers have provided response for 13.33 lakh accounts involving cash deposits of around Rs. 2.89 lakh crore. The online responses have been assessed and no further action will be taken in cases of satisfactory explanation. The salient features of the portal launched today are: • Providing comprehensive information at one place consisting of Step by Step Guides, Frequently asked Questions, User Guides, Quick Reference Guides and Training Toolkits related to verification process and other issues. • Enabling citizen engagement for creating a tax compliant society where every Indian takes pride in paying taxes. Citizens would be able to support the operation clean money by taking pledge (???????? ?? ?????), contribute by engaging and educating fellow citizens (?? ????????), and share their experiences and provide feedback (???? ?????). • Enabling Transparent Tax Administration by sharing status reports (including sanitized cases and explanation of verification issues) and thematic analysis reports (e.g. taxpayer segment analysis of cash deposit data). The ITD on-boarded two specialised data analytics agencies and a business process management agency to augment departmental capability in analyzing large volume of cash deposit data, track the compliance status of taxpayers and reporting entities. In Phase II of Operation Clean Money, the high risk cases will be handled by selecting appropriate enforcement action (verification, search, survey, scrutiny). A targeted campaign will be initiated in cases with identified risk issues. The key components of the targeted campaign are: · Communication of specific issue through digital channels (Email, SMS etc.) · Providing detailed explanation to create environment of transparency · Sharing investigation findings for specific segments (e.g. Jewellers, petrol pump, traders, property purchasers etc.) · Centralised monitoring and gradual escalation of inadequate response cases for enforcement action With the continuous flow of information from various sources including Statement of Financial Transactions (SFT), the ITD is conducting analysis in conjunction with previously available/analysed data. Such incremental data analysis has already led to identification of new cases for e-verification. Furthermore, ITD has also identified 3.71 lakh new accounts relating to 1.58 lakh taxpayers who made partial declaration of accounts/amounts in their earlier responses. In addition to the earlier 18 lakh cases, 5.68 lakh new cases have been identified for e-verification process. (ANI)