The Indian government on Tuesday said it is at an "advanced stage" of inking tax information exchange treaties with some countries, a move that will help speed up its efforts to trace black money stashed in foreign banks and help check tax evasion.
"We are in negotiations with 22 countries to ink the Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) to obtain tax related information. Agreements with three countries are at an advanced stage," Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chairman Sudhir Chandra said.
He said, however, that the names of the concerned countries were not immediately available.
Chandra said CBDT's foreign taxation units are also taking up the "re-negotiation" of the existing Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs) with various countries.
India is inking the TIEAs with countries like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Syria, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia,
South Korea and Vietnam.
The Income Tax department detected concealed income of Rs 15,000 crore in the last two years and has written to various "tax-haven" countries for obtaining financial information for its various high profile probes.
Chandra said the revised tax exchange treaty with Switzerland has been ratified in the first stage by the Swiss government. The treaty will now be placed before the Swiss
Parliament for final approval.