NEW DELHI: Soon, furnishing PAN card details for cash transactions beyond a certain limit will be mandatory.
>> Related << Non-declarants of Foreign Asset to Face Action: Jaitley
According to Arun Jaitley, Minister of Finance, the government was in dialogue with authorities to take this to the next level. The move is likely to keep a tab on black money flow, and will facilitate incentivising the shift to plastic currency from cash transactions.
“The government is at an advanced stage in considering the requirement of furnishing PAN card details if cash transactions beyond a certain limit are undertaken,” Jaitley said in a Facebook post.
He said the monitoring regime of the Department of Income Tax has been strengthened and its capacity to access information and apply technology driven analytical tools to expose evasion, has been enhanced.
“Its ability to detect large cash withdrawals, or large cash transactions, which enter the system is being strengthened. GST regime once introduced will also be a landmark step in this direction. Thus for commodities like gold where the initial purchase by the exporter is after the payment of custom duty, the subsequent transaction, which are mostly in cash, can easily be found out,” he said.
It may be noted that in 2015-16 Budget, Jaitley had proposed making PAN mandatory for all sale and purchase of over `1 lakh. The government had received several representations against such a move.
“The government has been working with various authorities in order to incentivise this (shift to plastic currency usage) change. The opening of a large number of payment gateways, internet banking, payments banks and the emerging reality of e-commerce will prompt the use of banking transactions and plastic money rise significantly,” he said.
The JAM Trinity and the Direct Benefit Transfer of subsidies will be a step ahead in this direction.
Each of the 18 crore beneficiaries of Jan Dhan accounts has been provided with RuPay cards, to use plastic currency. Similarly, the MUDRA Yojana is targeting 6 crore out of 25 crore families to become entrepreneurs.
Loans being made available to them can only be withdrawn from the ATMs through MUDRA credit cards. More transactions will be through plastic currency or through the banking channel, he said.