Income Declaration Scheme gets Rs 67,382 cr, over Rs 2K cr higher than estimate

NEW DELHI: The Finance Ministry today revised upwards black money disclosed under Income Declaration Scheme (IDS) to Rs 67,382 crore, which will fetch the government a little over Rs 30,000 crore in direct tax revenue even as it did not take into account two high value disclosures. The Income Tax Department, it said, did not take into consideration the much-talked about Rs 13,860 crore declaration made by Ahemdabad based Mahesh kumar Champaklal Shah, who has threatened to disclose the names of politicians and businessmen for whom he was acting as a front. "Among the declarations received, there were two sets of declarations of high value which were not taken on record in the above figure because they were found to be suspicious in nature being filed by persons of small means," the Finance Ministry said in a statement. It said: "On Oct 1, 2016, it was announced that declarations totalling Rs 65,250 crore were received from 64,275 declarants, subject to reconciliation. "After final reconciliation the revised figure of actual declarations received and taken on record was Rs 67,382 crore which had been made by 71,726 declarants." On the omission, former Finance Minister P Chidambaram in a tweet said, "There is a Rs 13,860 crore hole in the Rs 65,000 crore IDS! How many more holes?" Giving details, it said a family of four headed by one Abdul Razzaque Mohammed Sayed, residents of Bandra, Mumbai made a total declaration of Rs 2 lakh crore which was rejected by the Department as three out of the four PAN numbers were originally in Ajmer which were migrated in September 2016 to Mumbai, the place of the declarations. These declarations from Mumbai and Ahmedabad were kept pending for investigation about the genuineness of the same and were not included in the total value of declarations announced on October 1, it said. After due enquiry it was found that these declarants were persons of suspicious nature and very small means and the declarations could have been misused, it said. "Therefore, after due consideration, the Income Tax Department decided by November 30, to reject these two sets of declarations of Rs 2 lakh crore and Rs 13,860 respectively. The Department has commenced enquiries against these declarants to determine the intention behind these false declarations," said the ministry's statement.