Black Money Act Recovered ₹338 Crore Against ₹35,104 Crore Demanded: Kbs Sidhu Urges Finance Minister To Turn Foreign-asset Data Into Revenue
Oct5,2026
| Jagrati Lahar Bureau | Chandigarh
Taking a cue from China's latest drive to track down wealth concealed by its citizens in offshore
trusts, mostly in well-known tax havens, and the income accruing from it, former Special Chief
Secretary of Punjab KBS Sidhu has written to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. He
points out that India has recovered less than one per cent of the tax demanded under the Black
Money Act, 2015, and proposes three measures to close the gap.
Citing the Government's own replies in Parliament, KBS Sidhu notes that demands of ₹35,104
crore, including penalties, were raised under the Act between July 2015 and March 2025, against
which only about ₹338 crore was recovered. In the Panama and Paradise Papers, undisclosed
credits of ₹20,353 crore were detected against 930 India-linked entities, while tax collected
stood at ₹153.88 crore as of October 2021.
“Detection is no longer the constraint. Recovery is,” KBS Sidhu said. “India has received
financial account information from over a hundred jurisdictions since 2017, and Swiss account
data since 2019. The data is already in the Government's hands. What is missing is an identified
team charged with converting it into revenue.”
The letter comes as China's ninety-day window closes on 22 October. By then its residents must
declare and pay 20 per cent income tax on assets placed in offshore trusts, and on the income
those trusts earn, with liabilities reaching back to January 2023. Beijing has set up dedicated
teams of tax officials, inspection experts and regulators, some of them assigned to a single
billionaire.
“India need not, and should not, borrow China's coercion,” KBS Sidhu said. “The administrative
lesson holds all the same. Data yields revenue only when someone is made responsible for
collecting it.”
In his letter, KBS Sidhu, who served as Principal Secretary (Finance), Punjab, from 2010 to 2012,
proposes three measures within the Department of Revenue's existing powers.
First, a joint Foreign Assets Recovery Cell of the CBDT, the Enforcement Directorate and
the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND), supported by forensic accountants, with named
officers owning the highest-value cases from detection to recovery.
Second, an annual statement to Parliament from both the CBDT and the ED showing
amounts actually collected and assets actually repatriated from abroad, alongside demands
raised and attachments made.Third, a pilot with two or three jurisdictions on recovering Indian tax abroad through the
Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters and the
collection provisions of India's tax treaties, which have so far been used mainly to exchange
information.
None of these steps needs new legislation, he notes, and the first two could be announced in the
Union Budget for 2027–28.
KBS Sidhu also distinguishes between tax and assets. The Black Money Act taxes undisclosed
foreign income, while the ED's powers under the money-laundering and foreign-exchange laws
reach the asset itself. The ED's annual report for 2025–26 records attachments of ₹81,422 crore
and restitution of ₹63,142 crore. These arise largely from domestic cases, however, and no
figure is published for foreign assets actually brought home.
He contrasts this with the United States, which taxes its citizens and green-card holders on
worldwide income and enforces strict reporting of foreign accounts. Its offshore voluntary
disclosure programme brought more than 56,000 taxpayers into compliance and recovered over
$11 billion.
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