Demonetisation was initiated to move India from a tax non-compliant society to a compliant society, said Union Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley, while slamming the opposition parties for criticising the centre’s demonetisation move.
“Was the invalidation of the non-deposited currency the only object of demonetisation? Certainly not,” Jaitley said in a Facebook post responding on the criticism that demonetisation had not met its objectives.
He said that the benefits of demonetisation range from higher tax receipts, more money in the system and eventually higher growth.
Banning of higher denomination currency through demonetisation had helped in identifying .8 million depositors for enquiry, the minister said.
“Many of them are being fastened with tax and penalties. Mere deposit of cash in a bank does not lead to a presumption that it is tax paid money,” said Jaitley.
Further, there has been a phenomenal increase in the number of tax return filings, he added.
“The number of new returns filed post demonetisation increased in the past two years by 85.51 lakhs and 1.07 crores,” Jaitley said.
Advance tax in the first quarter has inflated significantly. While advance tax for personal income tax assesses grew by 44.1 percent and it inflated by 17.4 percent in the corporate tax category. Income tax collections post-demonetisation increased by 15 percent and 18 percent in the next two years as compared to the pre-demonetisation period.
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