Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said today that he had asked his ministry to review all the 77 double taxation avoidance agreements (DTAA) that the government had signed so far. This is being done to comply guidelines of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on sharing information on flow and parking of black money in various countries and is also in line with India’s commitment at the G-20 post the crisis.

Speaking at the India Economic Summit in Delhi today, the FM said that all G-20 members had decided to co-operate in the real time exchange of information so that individuals and institutions across the world would not be able to park surplus funds in tax havens. “All world leaders are co-operating and countries are falling in line one by one,” Mukherjee said.

OECD has blacklisted over 25 nations for tax relaxations they offer for parking funds. These include Mauritius, Cyprus, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Tax havens allow easy parking of money either through investments or deposits. They may offer a range of incentives including a nominal capital gains tax for companies to complete financial secrecy of accounts held by individuals and corporates. Some of the countries with which India has a DTAA are the Netherlands , Mauritius, Norway, Denmark, United Kingdom and Canada.

“This means that a clause will be inserted by way of which disclosure of financial accounts above a certain limit would be made mandatory,” said a senior government official. The IT Act might also be amended, he added.

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