Tax treaties with some countries at advanced stage: CBDT

New Delhi, Jan 18 (PTI) The government today said it isat an "advanced stage" of inking tax information exchangetreaties with some countries, a move that will help speed upits efforts to trace black money stashed in foreign banks andhelp check tax evasion.

"We are in negotiations with 22 countries to ink the TaxInformation Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) to obtain tax relatedinformation. Agreements with three countries are at anadvanced stage," CBDT Chairman Sudhir Chandra said.

He said, however, that the names of the concernedcountries were not immediately available.

Chandra said CBDT''s foreign taxation units are alsotaking up the "re-negotiation" of the existing Double TaxationAvoidance Agreements (DTAAs) with various countries.

India is inking the TIEAs with countries like the UnitedArab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan,Syria, China, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia,South Korea and Vietnam.

The Income Tax department detected concealed income of Rs15,000 crore in the last two years and has written to various"tax-haven" countries for obtaining financial information forits various high profile probes.

Chandra said the revised tax exchange treaty withSwitzerland has been ratified in the first stage by the Swissgovernment. The treaty will now be placed before the SwissParliament for final approval.