Bloomberg has reported that the country’s income tax department will not charge nationals if they transfer the money in their Swiss accounts back to India and pay off owed taxes.
India, like the US and UK, is seeking to clamp down on HNWIs with undeclared offshore assets as part of a joint effort to tackle tax evasion.
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The amnesty was given to a select number from 700 whose HSBC accounts in Geneva were disclosed to the Indian government last year by French authorities, Bloomberg reported.
India’s efforts stem from a data breach that occurred at HSBC Private Bank in Switzerland in 2010. Herve Falciani, a former HSBC employee, passed details of an estimated 15,000 client accounts to the French government.
Michael Shanly, a millionaire property developer, was ordered to pay £830,000 ($1.29m) in fines earlier this month by UK tax regulator HMRC, who gained information of his secret account as a result of the breach.
India is under more pressure than any other country to retrieve unpaid tax money.
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By GlobalDataAccording to a November 2010 report by Washington-based research firm Global Financial Integrity, which studies the cross-border flow of illegal money, illicit Indian assets abroad total about $462bn. This equates to 72% of the country’s underground economy.
Source: Private Banker International
