Black money crackdown: Government to rope in celebs to boost income disclosure scheme

NEW DELHI: The tax department has decided to rope in film starts, sports personalities as well as a financial expert as brand ambassadors to promote the Income Disclosure Scheme, which has seen few people coming clean in initial few weeks.

Sources said the government is launching regional campaigns, initially in Tamil and Telugu, to advocate the merits of the scheme meant to suck out black money from the system.

It has identified actor Kamal Hassan, composer and singer A R Rehman, world's top-ranked doubles tennis player Sania Mirza, singer S P Balasubrahmanyam along with oncologist V Shantha and auditor TN Manoharan for an adverti sing campaign that is being launched over the next few days.

In the coming weeks, a similar strategy could be adopted for other regions, including the Hindi-speaking areas as well. Already the financial po wers for publicity have been increased to promote the departments's two schemes -Income Declaration Scheme (IDS), and the ambitious Dispute Resolution Scheme. So far, in several large cities, the response has been in single digit as individu als are consulting chartered ac countants and seeking clarifi cations from the department.

Some tax consultants have been advising clients that the payment, including high penal ty, did not make sense. There are many who believe that they can get away with undisclosed income despite government tapping information, inclu ding from overseas, to detect those stashing wealth illegally.