Blackmoney: India to go for 'face-to-face' talks with tax

Giving a fresh thrust to their crackdown on blackmoney, Indian tax authorities have decided to cut down on lengthy paperwork and go for face-to-face engagement with their counterparts in tax havens and other nations to quicken the pace of recovery of tainted money stashed abroad.
The Union Finance Ministry, after due consultations with the SIT on black money and various financial probe agencies, has decided that a team of senior officials will hold bilateral meetings with foreign jurisdictions either in India or at the locations of their counterparts to thrash out issues quickly.
"The step is aimed to cut down on the time taken in paper-based documentation and communication in cases of illegal funds stashed abroad.

"A team of senior officials drawn from the Ministry and its various field formations will hold meetings and put across requests related to probe in these cases right on the discussion table. The required sanctions in this regard have been obtained from the government," a senior Finance Ministry official said.
The face-to-face engagements are aimed at understanding the problems faced by authorities abroad in parting with information related to black money and solve those at the earliest.
"Bilateral discussions, including through conference calls and face-to-face meetings with the competent authorities of our treaty partners which now include well known tax havens and offshore financial centres such as British Virgin Islands, Jersey, UAE and Singapore are being planned and the cooperation in this regard will be deepened in future.

"These bilateral meetings will help India in making targeted and specific requests for information and to understand the problems, if any, which prevent them in providing the information, and to examine how the same can be addressed," according to a note prepared by the Central Board of Direct Taxes accessed by PTI.
Three such meetings have already taken place and about half-a-dozen mre are lined up this year, including one with the European Union.