A POST ABOUT MOST INDIANS not paying taxes brought forth a retort from a Chartered Accountant group which wants to dispel the notion that most Indians are freeloaders and that only a small fraction of the population, which pays taxes, feeds them all. It says:
Dear Mr Arun Jaitly
You said in the budget speech that we are largely a tax non-compliant society. You said only 3.7 crores are filling Income Tax Rerurns in this poor country with 125 crore population.
We have 82 crore voters – 75% are agriculturists -61.5 crs (exempted by you directly, but they can also buy cars , bunglows etc. As you said, your political counterparts are also enjoying this)
Balance -20.5 crs. Less: 24% BPL class (Below poverty line) 15-crore population (non agriculturist and non BPL).
Less : senior citizens, non-working wives, unemployed youths, those with income below taxable limit.
In a typical indian family only 1 earning member and 5 to 6 are their dependents.
Balance (15-11.25) is 3.75 crores -the earning class, which can file ITRs.
And… they are already filling it.
So there is almost no gap as Jaitly is stressing unnecessarily without knowing his country!
If jaitly wants more people to come into the tax net, then, instead of foolishly resorting to only rampant raids, surveys, notices, scrutiny demonetisations etc, which are like terrorism, he should defy his negative bureaucrats and–
1. Introduce simple Income Tax on Agricultural Income on large landlords (say 10+plus Acres) – you can add 26% of Agriculturists as tax payers (many politicians are also enjoying this )
2. Instead of introducing penalties of 5000/10000 on late filers of IT returns, he can come out with a positive approach and introduce incentives to early ITR filers ( learn from Pakistan, an IT assessee there gets discount in purchase of car.)
3. Introduce Privilege card to those paying taxes above certain limit, to entitle then with benefits like priority quota in railway tickets , use of airport lounges, subsidised medical facilities, etc etc
Let Tax payers feel proud.
4. Introduce medical insurance / life insurance on basis of average ITR filled… like coverage upto twice of Gross Income in ITR filled for mediclaim and ten times risk cover in case of life insurance
5. Introduce pension after 65 yrs of age on the basis of tax paid by tax payer during his working life..
Let honest taxpayers get certain direct benefits….
As on today, 3.3% of Indians file ITRs as againt 8% of China. Adding large agriculturists to Income Tax net may shoot the figure up to more than 10% . It may help you cool your tax terrorism mindset and make us a tax-compliant nation …😊
“LET’S SPREAD THIS TO EDUCATE HONEST TAX PAYERS” the CAs’ letter says.😀😁😁
Those who don’t pay IT are not beggers. They pay many other taxes at every step, sales tax for all things they buy, road tax, municipal and other taxea plus service tax and cess on al these.
If there are any freeloaders, it is not they but politicians.
😀 Wriien on a cellphone 😊
This is one of the two posts written on a cell phone during travel when my iPad did not connect to wifi