Representational image. (Reuters)
Indians should be banned from keeping more than Rs 15 lakhs in cash at home, suggested a team of experts assigned by the Supreme Court to fight and recover black money today.
The panel of retired judges and bureaucrats has been formed as a Special Investigating Team, or SIT, to ensure the government uncovers which Indians have hidden untaxed money in foreign bank accounts.
The panel suggested today that the government should change existing laws so that officials can seize the properties and assets of tax violators, equivalent to the amount of black money they have collected abroad.
The SIT also asked that laws be amended to impose a cash limit of Rs 15 lakhs per individual.
The Supreme Court has been monitoring the government's attempts to identify and penalize Indians for black money since 2009, based on a petition by noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani. The BJP made the recovery of black money a major promise of its campaign for last year's national election, but after taking office, the government has acknowledged that existing tax treaties with countries like Switzerland impose restrictions on what sort of information it can access about foreign bank accounts.
The SIT of experts was set up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi soon after he took office; the previous Congress-led government had unsuccessfully argued in court that the team was not needed.
In November, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that 250 Indians had admitted to holding an account at HSBC in Geneva. In Last year, France gave India a list of nearly 600 citizens with accounts at HSBC in Geneva based on data leaked by a bank employee.
The Supreme Court has said that by the end of March, each of the people on the list should be investigated to determine if they are guilty of holding black money.