swiss authorities

“The German Tax authorities have provided to the Indian Government information available with them regarding accounts concerning Indian nationals with the LGT Bank of Liechtenstein…Assessments have been reopened under the Income Tax Act, 1961 in all these cases,” said the Minister of State for Finance, S S Palanimanickam, in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. Full Article

Swiss banks may have handed over client details to the US, but they have said India is not welcome there on a name-fishing expedition. “Swiss law and even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) model tax convention do not permit fishing expeditions, in other words, the indiscriminate trawling through bank accounts in the [...] Full Article

Government has no plans to bring a new amnesty scheme for tax evaders and wants to amend the Indo-Mauritius tax treaty to curb its abuse by companies, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday. VDS schemes in the past offered amnesty to people declaring black money and paying tax. But VDS schemes cannot be hugely successful [...] Full Article

The Swiss government has agreed to loosen its banking secrecy laws and share data on tax evasion cases that India may be pursuing, as part of a renegotiation of the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement that the two countries signed in 1995. Such a reformulated tax agreement will help tighten the legal noose on tax evaders [...] Full Article

In a major embarrassment for the Indian government, the Swiss Justice Department on Monday said it had received forged documents from New Delhi two years ago in connection with an alleged Rs.40,000 crore ($8 billion) money laundering case involving racehorse breeder Hassan Ali.  “The documents submitted are forged,” Folco Galli, a spokesperson for the Swiss government, told a private [...] Full Article