Union Cabinet has cleared the black money bill, which proposes to provide powers to tax authorities to deal with illegal wealth stashed abroad. A decision in this regard was taken at the cabinet meeting in New Delhi yesterday. Government sources said, the bill will be introduced in the current session of Parliament. Under the provisions of the new Bill, the offence will be non-compoundable and the offenders will not be permitted to approach the Settlement Commission. The bill also proposed the penalty at the rate of 300 per cent of taxes to be levied on the concealed income and assets, in addition to 10 years rigorous imprisonment. In his budget speech this year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said the government will come out with a new law to effectively deal with the black money stashed abroad as well as generation of black money in the country. In another decision, the cabinet approved the release of 33,000 crore rupees in tranches to states and Union Territories to compensate them for revenue loss on account of phasing out of Centre Sales Tax, CST for the three financial years up to 2012-2013. In the first phase 10,800 crore rupees is payable for 2010-11 as balance CST compensation. As part of the roll out of proposed Good and Service Tax, GST regime, the CST is being phased out and has been reduced to 2 percent from the earlier 4 percent. The cabinet also cleared the way for the signing of an agreement with the US for automatic exchange of financial account information. This will enable India to exchange information on black money with other countries or entities that are signatories of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act or FATCA. FATCA is the US federal law that requires US nationals living abroad to report their accounts and foreign financial institutions to report to about their clients.