'Problem of black money can be tackled by rationalising taxes'

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that the problem of domestic black money can be addressed by rationalising taxes and bringing more people under the banking net besides some other measures.

"The first step is you rationalise your rates and have rational rate of taxation which helps you in making sure that people comply," he said in a lecture at Columbia University.

"The second factor is that the nature of the economy is itself changing so more and more banking transactions, payment getaways are a reality, all this is going to incentivize and a lot of economy is going to go through the banking transaction as a result of this," he said yesterday.

In addition to this, Jaitley said the government has already announced in the budget that it is seriously looking at some category of transactions making PAN card compulsory over a particular threshold limit.

"As far as corporate taxes are concerned, once corporate tax rates go down the exemptions will have to be phased out," he said.

"These are those corporate exemptions which people get... Bulk of the litigation and discretion is around those exemptions," he added.

Referring to GST which is stuck in parliament, he said it is the top priority of the government.