Amending DTAAs buried black money route into India, says FM

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said that India has signed the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) amendments with Singapore.

Addressing a press conference here he said, "The amending DTAAs have buried route of black money into India, and there have been apprehensions that old provisions were being used for round-tripping and revisiting DTAAs was important to tackle black money."

He further said that the government had earlier amended DTAA's with Mauritius and Cyprus, and with effect from 2019, Switzerland will also start giving the real time info on investments by India or Indian entities in Switzerland in 2018.

"Must say that 2016 has been historic because three double taxation avoidance agreements, which provided routes to evade taxations have been blocked," added the minister.

Adding to this, Arun Jaitley said that 2019 will see the entire capital gains tax flowing back to India.

He said that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is adding high denomination notes every day, and from tomorrow all currency in recirculation will augment existing currency stock.

"Demonetisation data is yet to be tabulated but the situation has normalized to quite an extent, crowds at banks have reduced significantly," added the minister.