Income Tax Department has now made providing PAN number compulsory for jewellery-purchase worth rupees five lakh and above. But this is not enough because it is customary to show sale of jewellery largely undervalued. This limit should be lowered to at least rupees fifty thousand. Nothing can change till all sale of gold and silver including jewellery carved out of the precious metals worth rupees twenty thousand and above may be through banking channel only. Dealers dealing in jewellery and other items carved out of gold and silver may be required to maintain perfect weight-wise record of all items to effectively check black money utilised to purchase gold and silver items. This will check yellow and silver metals being prevented to be misused as source of investment of black money. Since India is the biggest consumer of gold, global gold-price largely depends on requirement of gold in India which is mostly for investment and utilisation of black money in gold. Idea should be that government may announce such drastic short and long term measures which may cause a setback among money-hoarders by sharply bringing down price of gold.
Likewise investment of black money in property can and should be checked by charging registry-fees at fixed circle rates rather than actual sale-deed. Presently sale-deed is done at lower than actual price to save registry-fees also. Circle-rates should be compulsorily reviewed every three months and should be approximately same as actual market value rather than quite low as presently is the system. Also Income Tax Act should provide permanent feature of voluntary disclosure by allowing undisclosed cash-receipt as income. It will catch hold of those purchasing property out of black money if seller’s return discloses appreciable cash-receipt as undisclosed income. But who will bell the cat when decision-takers may themselves be utilising gold and property as investment of their black money!
Madhu Agrawal
Delhi