new delhi over 175 lakh entities withdrew more than rs 1 crore each from their bank accounts in 201718 adding up to rs 11 lakh crore prompting the government to impose checks for better tracking and reduction of cash transactions although some of the withdrawals were for genuine business needs including by cash management companies which manage atms sources said the 201718 data also threw up several instances of what they believed was money meant to have been used for illicit purposes in a large number of cases the pan furnished was incorrect or was not shared at allthrough the proposed 2 tax deduction at source the government hopes to improve tracking of entities that withdraw large amounts of cash as entities withdrawing money will give their correct pan to claim adjustment at the time of payment of advance taxsources said there were over one lakh pan holders who withdrew rs 12 crore cash during 201718 while there were close to 500 entities that took out over rs 100 crore from their bank accounts nearly half the cash withdrawals during 201718 were from accounts where annual amount taken out was over rs 100 crorethe government collects data on all current accounts which have annual cash withdrawals of rs 50 lakh or more while data for some savings bank accounts is also reported by banksthe idea is to move to a less cash economy and this is a step in that direction most businesses dont need to have large cash transactions a tax official told toiin the budget finance minister nirmala sitharaman also proposed that entities with annual turnover of over rs 50 crore mandatorily provide digital payment tools such as qr codebased upi credit cards neft and rtgs where there is no burden either on the consumer or the merchantover the next few weeks the reserve bank of india is expected to work out the details in a way that banks cushion consumers and merchants in the same way as they are doing for rtgs and neft transactions which have now been made free for account holders using the two facilities to electronically transfer money to other accountswatch rs 1 crore withdrawals from over 175 lakh entities prompt government checks