Post the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency denominations on November 8 last year, 'black money' (or unaccounted money) worth Rs 4,900 crore was disclosed by 21,000 people under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojna (PMGKY), a PTI report said on Thursday, quoting a government official.
A top government official was quoted by PTI as saying that the Income Tax Department has collected tax of Rs 2,451 crore till date from these declarations. "21,000 people disclosed Rs 4,900 crore of black money under the PMGKY scheme that closed on March 31 this year. These are now the final figures," the official told PTI.
The stash money declaration window was announced by the government post the demonetisation process getting underway through December last year.
Revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia, after the closure of the PMGKY window, had said that the response to the scheme has "not been so good."
The government had termed the PMGKY as the one last window for black money holders to come clean by paying tax and penalty on their undisclosed illicit wealth. The scheme provided for payment of 49.9 percent tax, surcharge and penalty.
The I-T department is now following up the legal processes with the declarants in a few cases, the official said.
The PMGKY was announced after Prime Minister Narendra Modi after demonetisation was introduced last year. Launched in December last year, the scheme hoped to enable people with black money to come clean by paying tax and penalty of 50 percent. It closed on March 31 this year.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that the PMGKY was preceded by similar schemes and hence the public response to it should not be seen in isolation.
"Keep in mind that PMGKY in that financial year was not an isolated scheme. You first had the IDS, then you had people depositing cash in banking system knowing it would incur a tax liability and PMGKY was over and above that. When you look at the total amount of disclosures made, you have to look at all three of them collectively," the minister had said.
The PMGKY was preceded by the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS), between June 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016, where 71,726 declarations disclosing undisclosed income of Rs 67,382 crore were made by black money holders.
The government has collected over Rs 12,700 crore tax under the IDS till now.
