{"id":38718,"date":"2017-11-06T18:04:33","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T12:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/?p=38718"},"modified":"2017-11-06T18:21:21","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T12:51:21","slug":"bring-down-parallel-economies-existing-for-purpose-of-tax-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/special-story\/bring-down-parallel-economies-existing-for-purpose-of-tax-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBring down parallel economies existing for purpose of tax fraud\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
Mudda speakers feel the government should go after evaders while some call for Jayant Sinha\u2019s resignation; panelists also discuss red money trail<\/em><\/p>\n Two days before the government observes \u201cAnti-Black Money Day\u201d to mark the first anniversary of demonetisation, comes\u00a0the sensational leak of financial data, dubbed this time around as the Paradise Papers.\u00a0The\u00a0Paradise Papers\u00a0are a set of 13.4\u00a0million documents related to offshore investments leaked to the public in a section of the press. The data taken from offshore law firm, Appleby, could expose the hidden wealth of many individuals, including Indians, and show how corporations, hedge funds and others may have skirted taxes.\u00a0Among the\u00a0180 countries represented in the data, India ranks 19th in terms of the number of names, a report in\u00a0The Indian Express<\/em>\u00a0said.\u00a0In all, there are 714 Indians in the tally, it reported.\u00a0APN<\/em>\u2019s popular debate\u00a0Mudda <\/em>took up the issue with\u00a0participants Pradeep Rai, Supreme Court advocate, Ashok Goyal of the BJP, Shahzad Poonawala of the Congress, Tapan Bharti, economist, Vipin Garg, tax expert, and Govind Pant Raju,\u00a0APN<\/em>\u00a0consultant.<\/p>\n Anchor Himanshu Dixit started the debate, asking Bharti about the revelations. Bharti said the issue of offshore investments is not new. Whenever such cases have been brought to light, the governments of the day claim that they have pacts with various foreign countries, and that it is not possible for the government to intervene when people choose to deposit money in offshore banks. \u00a0\u201cHowever, the government needs to be more proactive because the existence of such parallel economies to evade tax is not good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Pradeep Rai said that the offshore investments may be black or white. As per various government notifications, people can have a certain amount of money in offshore banks, if they are doing business abroad, or in some other specific cases. He said the Pakistani Prime Minister had to resign as a fallout of the Panama Papers leak. The government should specifically go after the names of those who were indulging in tax evasion. He added that filmstar Amitabh Bachchan<\/a> maintained offshore accounts as he, at one time, had a TV channel in London. The government should order probe into specific cases of obvious tax evasion, he said.<\/p>\n