With the overnight demonetization of high currency notes, people are finding newer ways to settle their large amounts of cash before they turn into just a piece of paper. Its almost an amusing irony that in this fight against corruption, now even non-corrupts are finding ways to earn some extra bucks by helping people with unaccounted and black money in converting their old notes into new. Here are some amazing tricks people are using to curb black money:
1. Depositing money in the bank accounts of people with no or negligible income:
As declared by PM Modi where deposits exceed Rs 2,50,000, an inquiry will be made by the Income Tax Department regarding the source of such income and it will be matched by the Income Tax Returns filed by you. So, to leverage this, people are looking for bank accounts where they can park their unaccounted cash by paying them some commission ranging between 10% to 25%. The most-in- demand are salaried class employees and people from rural areas, as they generally have a good or no track record with the Income Tax Department.
2. Hiring people to stand in queues for exchanging their old notes:
People are standing in queues for well-off people against 300-500 bucks for exchanging their old notes, but this business is likely to stop from now on thanks to the governments decision of marking fingers with ink of those exchanging notes.
3. Exchanging old notes by visiting multiple branches of multiple banks on same day:
To stop this, now even government has taken the decision of using indedible ink to mark fingers of those who have exchanged old notes so that there is reduction in crowd at the banks.
4. Purchasing Gold, Properties and Electronics in black by paying extra premium:
Gold is selling at more than 60,000 per 10 gm, twice its actual value and properties are being sold by the builders and contractors at more than their fair value against old currency notes. Same with electronic items like mobile phones, laptops where sellers are accepting old notes at a premium and showing sales in backdated invoices.
5. Arranging IDs of friends, relatives and closed ones and entering in arrangements with Bank officials:
Some people are taking an extra mile by arranging numerous IDs and then getting in arrangements with bank officials. Then they are exchanging their old notes with new notes against all the IDs at once. So, that way they are exchanging upto 4,00,000-5,00,000 worth of their old notes in one single day.
6. Paying Advance Salaries to the trusted employees:
Its a very simple way of converting old currency into new currency for the businessmen as theyre paying their old and trusted staff advance salary in old notes which the staff is depositing in their account, interest on it being their extra income.
7. Offering Interest-Free Loans to relatives and friends:
In a bid to park enormous cash funds, people are approaching their relatives, friends and other known persons if they want some extra interest free funds which they can repay later after the air of demonetization and Income Tax inquiry settles down. Its a win-win situation for both the parties.
8. Donations at Religious Trusts:
People are giving donation with their old notes at temples, mosques, church and other religious places. After donating, they get into tie-ups with the accounts officials of that place and in exchange of 20%-30% commission, get new currency or Rs 100 notes.
9. Trying to keep the High balance of cash in hand in the Books:
This is one other trick used by the businessmen where theyre inflating their back dated sales and booking them as cash sales so that they can show handsome cash balance in white. Then theyre depositing this cash balance in their current accounts as proceed from sales.
10. Alliance with Political Parties:
Do you know that political parties enjoy an interesting exemption, i.e. they are not required to furnish source for donations received for Rs 20,000 and less? So, anyone having an alliance with a political party can very conveniently exchange/donate black money or unaccounted money against some commission without any risk to both the parties.
With governments strict stance on this matter and the newly amended Benami Act (which prohibits transactions which are done in others name through illegal means like buying property in your servant’s name etc.), and the upcoming amendments in Budget-2017, it will be wise to take any action only after considering all consequences and penalties that may arise in future. said CA Abhishek Soni, Co Founder of Tax2win. We strongly recommend that you should not get into such things as you never know when you can be penalized for it.
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