Govt to soon make PAN must for cash spending beyond a limit

New Delhi: To check generation of domestic black money, the government will soon make it mandatory to furnish PAN card details for cash transactions beyond a certain threshold, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Sunday.

"The government is at an advanced stage in considering the requirement of furnishing PAN card details if cash transactions beyond a certain limit are undertaken," Jaitley said in a Facebook post.

He said the monitoring regime of the income tax department has been strengthened and its capacity to access information and apply technology driven analytical tools to expose evasion, has been enhanced.

"Its ability to detect large cash withdrawals, or large cash transactions which enter the system, is being strengthened. GST regime once introduced will also be a landmark step in this direction.

"Thus for commodities like gold where the initial purchase by the exporter is after the payment of custom duty, the subsequent transactions which are mostly in cash, can easily be found out," Jaitley said.

In 2015-16 Budget, the Finance Minister had proposed making quoting of Permanent Account Number (PAN) mandatory for all sale and purchase of over Rs 1 lakh.

"Quoting of PAN is being made mandatory for any purchase or sale exceeding the value of Rs 1 lakh. The third party reporting entities would be required to furnish information about foreign currency sales and cross border transactions," Jaitley had said.

Thereafter, the government had received representations from various persons, including MPs, MLAs, trade and industry associations among others, against the proposed mandatory quoting of PAN for sale or purchase in excess of Rs 1 lakh.

Stressing that bulk of black money is still within India, Jaitley said there was a need to change the national attitude so that plastic currency becomes the norm and cash an exception and the government is working with various authorities to incentivise this change.

"Being seized of this problem, the government has been working with various authorities in order to incentivise this change. The opening of a large number of payment gateways, internet banking, payment banks and the emerging reality of e-commerce will prompt the use of banking transactions and plastic money rise significantly," Jaitley said.

The JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) Trinity and the Direct Benefit Transfer of subsidies to the accounts of beneficiaries of various government schemes will also be a step ahead in this direction, Jaitley added.

Each of the 18 crore beneficiaries of Jan Dhan accounts has been provided with RuPay cards, which will encourage them to use plastic currency and get familiarised with it, he said.

The MUDRA Yojana, over the next few years, has a target of 6 crore families out of 25 crore families in India to become entrepreneurs.

Loans being made available to them by the banks can only be withdrawn from the ATMs by use of MUDRA credit cards which are being provided to them. More and more of their transactions will be through plastic currency or through the banking channel, Jaitley added.