A nice article in Busines standard is worth reading. Tax base in India is poor and salaried class gets hit every time,tax collections are low.
PAN cards have become mandatory for many transactions,still we have some political class people standing for election as candidates without having PAN. Link to a petition against such law makers is :
MLAs, MPs drawing salary without PAN: Writ petition - Times Of India. Why tax compliance is so low. people dont belive in paying tax or belive that tax collected will be properly used for nation bulding. While these thoughts are debateable,this blog in Business standrard is interesting:
The dishonest super-rich club of India
Nobody will believe Finance Ministry data that only 400,000 Indians earn more than Rs 20 lakh a year
I had barely finished my lecture in support of Tax on Super Rich, when this gentleman sprang up from the audience and asked me how the finance ministry will define “Super Rich” in India. I managed to answer his question by reminding him that certain issues should be left to the mandarins at the ministry.
But the gentleman’s question kept haunting me – How do you identify “Super Rich” in India?
The cat was set among the pigeons by the Union finance minister P Chidambaram when he indicated that the government might bring in some form of additional taxation for India’s super-rich. “We should consider the argument whether the very rich should be asked to pay a little more on some occasions,” he said.
Obviously, the Indian super-rich being upset at this idea registered their protests and some even said it would hurt entrepreneurship and in turn will halt economic development of the country. While Azim Premji remained the lone voice in support of taxing the super-rich.
Before we get into this controversy of right and wrong, fair and unfair, let us try and understand the numbers we are dealing with. According to the Finance Ministry data (for the year 2011-12), India has only about 400,000 taxpayers who earn more than Rs 20 lakh as income and pay taxes. This group accounted for around 63% of the taxes collected by the government and constituted only a miniscule 1.3% of the total taxpayers.
The above statistics clearly indicate that there is a huge amount of inequality in tax collection, which necessarily does not mirror the pattern of wealth distribution in India. Nobody will believe that India has only 400,000 super rich who earn more than Rs 20 lakh annually – they would feel the number of super rich is much higher. And they are absolutely right. The only problem is that India has only 400,000 honest super rich and the rest are the dishonest super rich.
The dishonest super-rich club of India | Business Standard
Amitabh Bachan keeps coming frequently in the news regarding IT travails.but there are far more richer people who live without spotlight being turned on them.
We as a nation ought to pay taxes regularly and make Government accountable for effective and constructive use of funds collected. Progress of nation depends on our ability to pay taxes as responsible citizens and democratically question wasteful and non productive expenditures.