India for expanding scope of AEOI on non-financial assets

India has pitched for expanding the scope of automatic exchange of info or AEOI on non-financial assets including crypto and properties to plug in tax evasions, revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra said Thursday.

He added that flow of information has helped India in increasing tax collection.

India currently has AEOI with 108 jurisdictions for receiving financial information and with 79 jurisdictions for sending information automatically.


Addressing a meeting of the Asia Initiative of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange, Malhotra said there is a need to broaden the scope of AEOI so that the information could be used not only to check tax evasion but also for other non-tax law enforcing purposes.

"We would also like expansion of the CRS (Common Reporting Standards) from financial to new other non-financial accounts and assets, because the risks are not only in financial assets... There is a risk of tax evasion in non-financial and real assets, properties," Malhotra said.

At present, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's AEOI framework provides for sharing of financial account details among signatory countries with an aim to check tax evasion.

Under AEOI framework, signatory countries follow CRS and obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that data with other jurisdictions on an annual basis.