Government negotiating issues relating to DTAA with Mauritius

NEW DELHI: Outstanding issues relating to the existing Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) are under negotiation between India and Mauritius through the mechanism of Joint Working Group (JWG), Parliament was informed today.

"India has proposed changes in the existing DTAA to address concerns relating to treaty abuse, around tripping of funds, double non-taxation and revenue loss. Both sides are working bilaterally to resolve these issues," Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.

The last JWG meeting between India and Mauritius was held from June 29 to July 1, last year in Delhi to discuss outstanding issues.

In a reply to a separate query, Sinha said the Income Tax Department has implemented the Non-Filer Monitoring System (NMS), which analyses and assimilates all in-house information as well as transactional data received from third parties including Annual Information System (AIR), tax deduction at source and Tax Collected at Source (TCS) statements.

"About 1.36 crore non-filers with potential tax liability have been identified under NMS amd more than 52 lakh returns have been filed by the target segments," the minister said.

Sinha said for the assessment year 2014-15, the number of taxpayers of income tax is 5.45 crore, which works out to be 4.36 per cent of estimated population of 125 crore.