The Indian government will now take steps to close down the inactive companies, which are said to be around 6-7 lakh in numbers. This is going to be a part of the campaign which the government is running against black money and with this step, it will make a serious dent in the institutional money laundering.
These inactive firms were involved in huge transactions after demonetization of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 currency notes. What’s more, they are more than 40% of the registered 15 lakh companies and filtering them out will be a daunting task.
Therefore, for this purpose, the government has included many other agencies with Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) in the lead role.
As per a senior officer of CBDT, the Income Tax department has collected information on such companies which were involved in depositing huge amount of cash during the two-month period when the government had allowed public and companies to deposit scrapped currency in banks.
Till now, many of these firms haven’t filed annual returns with Registrar of Companies (RoC) which has helped them in keeping themselves out of the view of the IT department.
CBDT has made the government believe that if these 6-7 lakh inactive firms are closed down, it will bring an end to “institutional money laundering” in India. After this, the government has involved RBI, Intelligence Bureau, SEBI and the corporate affairs ministry in the whole exercise.
These inactive firms are not involved in any actual business and they don’t have assets too, as they are the entry operators for laundering money for their clients. A databank has been prepared by CBDT which will show the relation between these entry operators and their banking transactions. This data will also have the information collected from property registration, reports about doubtful transactions from FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit) and accounts in foreign banks. The data has also been matched with the PAN and addresses of those who are under the scanner.
It seems that a lot is going to happen in the coming days! What do you think of this step of the government? Share your views in the comments section below.
