Arun Jaitly about tax evaders

New Delhi, May 01: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday called on the agency to "strictly" enforce the law to help raise legitimate revenue.

On Sunday he vowed to make an example of money launderers and tax evaders and said that penalizing powers of the Enforcement Directorate should be used "expeditiously" in cases of non-compliance.

Jaitley felt that non-compliance of tax laws has always hit the larger public and national interest.

"The revenue department and the ED have a very important role to play," he emphasized. "There is an expectation of compliance and in the event of non-compliance, there is the power of penalizing that the ED has. This power has to be expeditiously used whenever violations are detected."

The finance minister said these violations are not difficult to detect and scrutiny of filing with the registrar of companies can also lead to the detection.

"The entire route of multi-layering through which the money laundering takes place... It is a matter of a few minutes to detect how the violation takes place," he cautioned.

"Once we are able to make an example of some of these offenders, I think others then will realize the benefits of compliance with the law," he added.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also called for introspection saying that as India evolves, the compliance level too should rise.

He said the total budgeted tax revenue collection of over Rs. 19 lakh crore would have gone up if there were compliance in India and this money could have been used for funding education, healthcare, and infrastructure.