By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, MAY 17, 2017: THE Finance Minister, Mr Arun Jaitley, officially launched the Portal of Operation Clean Money  in  New Delhi yesterday in the presence of senior officers of the Ministry of Finance, Department of Revenue and the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT).

The Operation Clean Money was initiated by the Income Tax Department (ITD) on the January 31, 2017 with the launch of e-verification of large cash deposits made during November 9th to  December 30th, 2016. In the first phase, around 18 lakh persons were identified in whose case, cash transactions did not appear in line with the tax payer's profile. There has been an encouraging response to the online verification process and more than 9.72 lakh taxpayers submitted their response without visiting Income tax office up to May 12, 2017.  These taxpayers have provided response for 13.33 lakh accounts involving cash deposits of around Rs 2.89 lakh crore. The online responses have been assessed and no further action will be taken in cases of satisfactory explanation.

In Phase II of Operation Clean Money , the high risk cases will be handled by selecting appropriate enforcement action (verification, search, survey, scrutiny). A targeted campaign will be initiated in cases with identified risk issues. The key components of the targeted campaign are:

With the continuous flow of information from various sources including Statement of Financial Transactions (SFT), the ITD is conducting analysis in conjunction with previously available/analysed data. Such incremental data analysis has already led to identification of new cases for e-verification. Furthermore, ITD has also identified 3.71 lakh new accounts relating to 1.58 lakh taxpayers who made partial declaration of accounts/amounts in their earlier responses.  In addition to the earlier 18 lakh cases, 5.68 lakh new cases have been identified for e-verification process.