Wrapping up his nine-day US visit, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said India will sign an agreement with the US under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) that would facilitate automatic transmission of information and would help counter the scourge of black money.
Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Jaitley said the deal would help provide information of transactions by Indian citizens in the US and other countries that have signed up on FATCA.
"From contraction of black money to squeezing it out to creating a deterrent for keeping it outside, we have already taken some of those very important steps, India is also in the forefront of the entire G20 effort for automatic transmission of information," he said. "Otherwise the consequences of withholding tax will follow. These are all tough measures which we are announcing."
The same day when securities regulator Sebi came out with a new listing mechanism for startups, Jaitley said he had appointed to look into whether the government could replace the permissions regime with a regulatory mechanism and whether some permissions could be shifted to an online framework.
The FM also said the government was focusing on renewable energy in a big way.
"The renewable energy programs that we have now in India are probably the largest in the world because we don't want polluting energy to gain much space," he said. "We have one of the highest carbon taxes in India, the clean energy tax, the proceeds of which are going towards the construction for toilets."
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