To bring illicit wealth in the books, Finance Minister launched the new portal 'Operation Clean Money' on the backs of the Operation Clean Money drive initiated by the Income Tax Department. As part of the earlier move, taxpayers were verified electronically for huge deposits made post demonetization between 9th November and 30th December 2016.

On the launch Finance Minister said that there has been a remarkable shift to the digital platform, assessees as well as tax revenues have gone up amid heightened fears of dealing in cash. So, the new portal is exclusively dedicated for those identified as part of Operation Clean Money drive

The first batch of the e-verification process identified as many as 18 lakh taxpayers whose cash transactions did not matched with their profile.

Some of its major attributes are :

1. The new portal offers comprehensive information that includes user guides, FAQs, reference guides, training tool kits for verification process as well as other issues.

2. The portal shall enable transparent administration of tax with status reports that includes details pertaining to sanitized cases as well as verification in addition to thematic analysis reports, for example - segment analysis of taxpayers cash deposit data.

3. The platform shall also boost citizen engagement whereby every Indian will be proud to pay taxes and create a tax compliant society at large. On the platform, citizens shall take oath, put in their efforts to educate as well as share their experiences with other fellow citizens to make the drive Operation Clean Money successful.

4. To enhance departmental efficiencies and capabilities, the Income Tax department contracted with a business process management firm and two leading data analytics company for analyzing large chunk of data related to cash deposit and deduce the taxpayers compliance status.

5. As part of the second phase of Operation Clean Money, proper enforcement action that includes verification, survey, search and scrutiny would be taken against high-risk accounts. High risk cases then shall be dealt with a targeted campaign which shall include the following components- communication via e-mail or SMS for the specific issue, detailed explanation in respect of the issue to render a transparent environment, central monitoring and in cases of insufficient response gradual escalation of the issue for enforcement action and sharing investigation analysis of specific segments such as petrol pumps, traders, jewelers etc. Already, over 60,000 such individuals are under income tax lens as identified by data analytics. Study.

6. Together with the reporting of Statement of Financial Transactions (SFT) which is mandated to be done by 31st May and other data sources, the Income Tax department is doing an incremental analysis of data. The analysis has further succeeded in identifying new cases for e-verification.

7. For communication purposes between the department and taxpayer, the new portal would make use of PAN. E-assessments will be encouraged to maintain minimum human interaction.