Wednesday, November 16 2005 17:59 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Finance Minister P Chidambaram today (Nov 16, 2005) said the new Banking Cash Transaction Tax imposed this year has started yielding results by helping authorities keep a track on black money. "Yes, it has yielded results. We have identified large number of tax payers. I can't disclose specific cases. We have detected a case in which a person operated from 200 accounts," Chidambaram told the annual economic editors conference here.

Apart from keeping a track on black money, he said BCTT also garnered some revenue to the government.

Chidambaram also said government was committed to its budget promise on simplifying tax laws and a bill was expected to be drawn up early next year.

On proposed rationalisation of duties on petroleum products, he said a panel headed by Rangarajan was looking into it and government will consider the proposals when the panel submits its report.

Regarding a suggestion to replace Income Tax by a Transaction Tax, Chidambaram said it was an old suggestion but it cannot be implemented as there was no way to track all transactions.

"Unless we have a system to track all transaction, we cannot replace Income Tax with a Transaction Tax," he said.

On a query to withdraw tax exemption to tribals particularly North East, he said, "tribals are exempted from income tax for historical reasons. There is no proposal to withdraw it".