Income declaration and tax disclosure scheme:

• The Centre’s move to mop up black money from the economy by giving taxpayers amnesty to declare undisclosed past income by paying tax on it at an effective, slightly high rate of 45 percent has yielded a surprisingly positive dividend. 
• Strict warnings about tough action and possible jail terms for those who failed to declare their ‘cartloads’ of black money may have added punch to the Finance Ministry’s pitch. 
• The Centre, however, must not consider this the end of its campaign on black money. To put things in context, the average undisclosed income per taxpayer under the scheme stands at Rs.1 crore; and though the disclosures are nearly double those in the last income amnesty scheme (around Rs.33,700 crore), nearly two decades have passed since then, making comparisons misleading. 
• The tax department is aware that Rs.65,250 crore is just the tip of the iceberg — it had sent seven lakh letters to suspected evaders based on information on about 90 lakh high-value transactions that took place without PAN card details.
• The tax department must crackdown on such evaders and spruce up its data-mining methods to expand the country’s shallow tax base. While the department’s efforts have revealed undisclosed income of over Rs.58,000 crore in the last two and half years, and more is being pursued from tax havens where Indian holdings have come to light, all of this is akin to treating the symptoms without addressing the root cause.
• If the Centre is serious about attacking India’s thriving black economy, it needs to be bold and, for starters, make electoral funding transparent, curb the misuse by the wealthy of tax-free income sops for farmers, and encourage cashless transactions.