The nation wants you to pay
8 years, 10 months ago

The nation wants you to pay

Deccan Chronicle  

A few years ago, a man used to come home every morning to teach me how to sing. First, only around one per cent of Indians pay any income tax and about twice that number have filed returns. To understand this number, we must know that in the United States, 45 per cent of the population pays tax. A study of income tax compliance between 1965 and 1993 in India concluded that “declining assessment intensity had a significant negative effect” on compliance, while “traditional enforcement tools had only a limited effect” on Indians. The authors puzzled over the fact that “India’s income tax performance below the average of countries with similar GDP per capita”.

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History of this topic

India’s tax authorities should work harder to make peace with taxpayers
1 week, 3 days ago

India’s tax authorities should work harder to make peace with taxpayers

Live Mint  

Indians have long had a confrontational relationship with the nation’s tax office, whose adversarial approach has crushed countless small businesses and international investors. A few weeks ago, India’s federal budget cut taxes for many middle-class Indians. Average citizens that most of these attempts by tax authorities to go after taxpayers are to meet some arbitrary collection targets, instead of being …

India’s taxation crisis: Can 1% bear such a large country’s burden?
1 month, 1 week ago

India’s taxation crisis: Can 1% bear such a large country’s burden?

Live Mint  

With just about 1% of Indians expected to fund about a third of the government’s gross tax revenue next fiscal year, India has a taxation problem. Data from the Central Board of Direct Taxes indicates that the number of people filing tax returns has risen by 82% over the past nine years, reaching 104 million in assessment year 2023-24. His …

India’s taxes nipping at your earnings? It could be worse.
Trending News
1 month, 2 weeks ago

India’s taxes nipping at your earnings? It could be worse.

Live Mint  

India’s seemingly high income tax rates are softer than that of several advanced economies, allowing for a better quality of life across income groups, data show. In India, the highest marginal rate for taxpayers in the highest income slab is 39% under the new tax regime and 42.7% in the old regime. Let’s consider a ₹50 lakh annual income as …

The reform of tax policy has a big role in India’s Viksit Bharat journey
1 month, 2 weeks ago

The reform of tax policy has a big role in India’s Viksit Bharat journey

Live Mint  

As we embark on our journey to achieve the vision of ‘Viksit Bharat by 2047,’ there is little doubt that tax policy will play a key role in realizing it. A developed India must have well-drafted and comprehensive tax laws, a taxpayer-friendly yet robust tax administration, a strong culture of compliance among taxpayers and effective dispute prevention and resolution mechanisms. …

Zero tax nations vs high tax countries: A global look at Income Tax systems
1 month, 3 weeks ago

Zero tax nations vs high tax countries: A global look at Income Tax systems

India TV News  

Governments around the world rely heavily on income taxes as a primary source of revenue. Countries with the highest Income Tax rates In contrast, several countries impose high-income tax rates to fund comprehensive social welfare programs, public healthcare, and infrastructure: Finland : Tax rate of 57.3 per cent. Ivory Coast : Holds one of the highest tax rates globally at …

Can India transition to a single income tax rate?
1 month, 3 weeks ago

Can India transition to a single income tax rate?

Live Mint  

The slab rate system of taxation has been a cornerstone of India’s tax framework since its inception. Of the approximately 6.9 crore individuals who filed returns, the gross total income reported was ₹53.7 lakh crore, while the total tax liability amounted to just ₹5.7 lakh crore—an effective tax rate of only 10.64%. For instance, an individual with a gross income …

Agri and All Trade Chambers urge Union Finance Minister for bold steps in 2025-26 budget to revive economy
2 months ago

Agri and All Trade Chambers urge Union Finance Minister for bold steps in 2025-26 budget to revive economy

The Hindu  

Agri and All Trade Chambers, ahead of the Union Budget 2025-26, urged Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to look for bold, drastic and innovative steps to revive the economy back to the 7% growth recorded in the preceding three years to achieve the goal of USD 5 trillion economy by 2030. Noting that proactive steps were essential to put the …

‘India must impose more taxes on super-rich’: Economist Thomas Piketty as top 1% hold over 40% of nation’s wealth
3 months ago

‘India must impose more taxes on super-rich’: Economist Thomas Piketty as top 1% hold over 40% of nation’s wealth

Live Mint  

NEW DELHI - India should do more to tax its super-rich given its high levels of inequality, French economist and author Thomas Piketty said on Friday. "India should be active in taxing the rich," Piketty said at an event organised by Delhi-based think tank Research and Information System for Developing Countries and the Delhi School of Economics. He said India …

State of income tax in India: Rich pay more, middle class less
4 months ago

State of income tax in India: Rich pay more, middle class less

Firstpost  

Income tax liability on salaried individuals earning less than Rs 20 lakh a year, broadly described as middle class, has fell sharply during the 10 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government. Also, the income tax liability of those earning more than Rs 50 lakh has increased 3.2 times or 282 per cent, from Rs 2.52 lakh crore in 2014, …

Income tax share from below ₹10 lakh group shrinks over 10 years, high earners dominate
Trending News
4 months ago

Income tax share from below ₹10 lakh group shrinks over 10 years, high earners dominate

Live Mint  

Data from the Income Tax Department reveals a shift in India’s tax landscape over the past decade, with the share of tax collected from individuals earning less than ₹10 lakh dropping from over 10% to 6.22%. Tax collection from this group has tripled, rising from ₹2.52 lakh crore in 2014 to ₹9.62 lakh crore in 2024, data showed. “Tax liability …

Reforming India's tax culture for better tax to GDP ratio
8 months ago

Reforming India's tax culture for better tax to GDP ratio

Hindustan Times  

For India to achieve its economic goal of becoming a developed country by 2047, it must mobilise massive resources to build the nation. However, India's approach has been to levy high indirect taxes through multiple Goods and Services Tax slabs while offering significant exemptions to individual taxpayers. The current tax exemption policy for low-income earners, aimed at reducing the financial …

Inheritance tax: An economic blunder
10 months ago

Inheritance tax: An economic blunder

New Indian Express  

This has also been protested by small businesses and farmer’s unions, such as the National Farmers Union, that has been advocating for the simplification of the estate tax. Impact on Entrepreneurship and Wealth Acquisition in India The concept of inheritance tax would be suicidal for a country like India, as there is already certain amount of discontent amongst the honest …

India not ready for high tax-GDP levels
1 year, 1 month ago

India not ready for high tax-GDP levels

New Indian Express  

Budget 2024 estimates show that the ratio of taxes collected by the Centre to GDP will likely touch 11.6 percent in the current financial year and breach the 12 percent-mark in the next. However, the government claims India’s current tax-to-GDP ratio is much better than many countries with similar per capita income. Such a high ratio is possible only when …

Naysayers Have It Wrong, Incomes in India Are Rising
1 year, 2 months ago

Naysayers Have It Wrong, Incomes in India Are Rising

News 18  

The state of income in India has suddenly become a topic of raging discussion after former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and economist Rohit Lamba suggested that the country cannot escape the lower-middle income trap by 2047. India’s gross direct tax collections in the ongoing financial year, until November 9, have increased almost 18 per cent to Rs 12.37 lakh crore. …

Why are India’s poorest people being left behind?
2 years, 1 month ago

Why are India’s poorest people being left behind?

Al Jazeera  

On Tuesday, February 7 at 19:30 GMT: India’s BJP-led government says its final budget before a general election in 2024 will spur economic growth, but opposition politicians are among critics who say it fails to address ever-deepening income and wealth inequality highlighted by anti-poverty groups. But it does not include the re-introduction of a wealth tax on the rich that …

Where does India stand in the world in comparison of individual tax rates?
2 years, 1 month ago

Where does India stand in the world in comparison of individual tax rates?

Live Mint  

With the Union Budget just a few days away, the expectations are high around significant changes in individual taxes. Indian scenario: India follows the progressive tax slab rate system for individual taxpayers, where the tax rate is determined based on varied factors: a) Age groups: Normal taxpayers, Senior citizens and Super senior citizens where senior people enjoy a higher basic …

Personal income tax rate cut can revive economy
5 years, 3 months ago

Personal income tax rate cut can revive economy

Live Mint  

With the next budget of the Centre less than two months away, one thing the government can do to revive the economy is cut personal income tax rates or increase the tax slabs and thus put more money in the hands of people. Of the total 58.7 million income tax returns filed in the 2018-19 assessment year, 94%, or 55.3 …

Opinion | Why higher taxes are not the way to better welfare in India
5 years, 4 months ago

Opinion | Why higher taxes are not the way to better welfare in India

Live Mint  

Abhijit Banerjee, winner of the 2019 Economics Nobel along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, has been talking up the idea of high and rising marginal tax rates for the rich. While the rich may be leaving India for reasons other than just high tax rates, surely, hiking marginal taxes will hardly convince them to return and invest in this …

Decoding the great Indian taxpayer
5 years, 4 months ago

Decoding the great Indian taxpayer

Live Mint  

The salaried income tax payer in India often feels cheated. A small portion of India’s salaried population pays the bulk of its individual income tax, which gets redistributed to others and doesn’t benefit the taxpayers that much. Further, a huge jump in the income declared by the salaried class has essentially been responsible for the overall increase in individual income …

How a small tax-paying elite funds the Indian state
5 years, 7 months ago

How a small tax-paying elite funds the Indian state

Live Mint  

The move to raise surcharges on the incomes of India’s super-rich taxpayers has led to a barrage of criticism from tax experts who have questioned such ‘soak-the-rich’ policies. The analysis also shows that the top 5% of effective tax-payers in the country, equivalent to 0.1% of the country’s population, contribute nearly three-fifths of India’s income tax collections. If India’s personal …

Highest personal I-T rate in India still lower than in China, US, South Africa
5 years, 8 months ago

Highest personal I-T rate in India still lower than in China, US, South Africa

India TV News  

Justifying raising of tax incidence on the super-rich, the finance ministry said the highest tax rate in India was still lower than many countries, including the US and China, and it was a worldwide phenomenon to ask the super-rich to pay extra tax. Revenue Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey sought to justify the Budget proposal to increase the surcharge on super-rich …

Tax no more
5 years, 8 months ago

Tax no more

India Today  

Winston Churchill had prophetically remarked: "For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." Those earning less than Rs 5 lakh a year pay no taxes while those in the income range of Rs 5-10 lakh pay 20 per cent tax, plus …

Union Budget 2019: India's income tax base not wide in proportion to population; taxpayers' number rises in past 5 years
5 years, 8 months ago

Union Budget 2019: India's income tax base not wide in proportion to population; taxpayers' number rises in past 5 years

Firstpost  

Income tax is a major source of direct taxation in India. Those with incomes between Rs 5,00,001 and Rs 10 lakh need to pay Rs 12,500, in addition to a 20 percent income tax after deducting Rs 5,00,000 from the total income. Those earning between Rs 3 to 5 lakh need to pay 5 percent of the total income as …

Targeted transfers may be more effective than Universal Basic Income
6 years, 6 months ago

Targeted transfers may be more effective than Universal Basic Income

Live Mint  

New Delhi: Over the past few years, the idea of a Universal Basic Income for all citizens has been gaining currency, in the developed as well as the developing world. In developing countries such as India, the leakages associated with traditional welfare schemes have prompted a discussion on the Universal Basic Income, with former chief economic adviser, Arvind Subramanian, pushing …

Is India an outlier when it comes to tax-GDP ratio?
7 years, 1 month ago

Is India an outlier when it comes to tax-GDP ratio?

Live Mint  

Mumbai/New Delhi: Of late, several economists and policymakers have drawn attention to India’s low share of tax revenues as a proportion of the gross domestic product of the Indian economy. The realization, or rather the belief, that India’s tax-GDP ratio is low has also spurred frenetic efforts to mobilize ever-greater tax revenues. A Mint analysis of tax revenue data for …

The persistent poverty of the Indian State
8 years, 3 months ago

The persistent poverty of the Indian State

Live Mint  

Tirthankar Roy is arguably the finest contemporary scholar of Indian economic history. Roy has provided data to show that the tax collected for every unit of economic output in India was very low compared to not only a colonial power such as Great Britain or an Asian success story such as Japan but also compared to colonized countries such as …

The Aakar Patel column: Don't blame the Indian state for "black" economy, blame yourself
8 years, 10 months ago

The Aakar Patel column: Don't blame the Indian state for "black" economy, blame yourself

Firstpost  

We will continue to have a large ‘black’ economy, as long as other Indians don’t pay tax. First, only around 1 percent of Indians pay any income tax, and about twice that number have filed returns. A study of income tax compliance between 1965 and 1993 in India, concluded that “declining assessment intensity had a significant negative effect” on compliance, …

Only 3.81% Indians pay Income Tax; Maharashtra, Delhi pay 53% of the total
8 years, 10 months ago

Only 3.81% Indians pay Income Tax; Maharashtra, Delhi pay 53% of the total

Firstpost  

By Devanik Saha, IndiaSpend On 29 April 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced–for the first time ever in India–the release of income-tax data, which follows economist Thomas Piketty’s call for income-tax data transparency. Only 3.81% of Indians pay income taxes As many as 48 million individuals were tax assessees* in the assessment year 2014-15, or 3.81 percent of India’s population. …

India is an outlier in its tax policy
9 years ago

India is an outlier in its tax policy

Live Mint  

The celebrated French economist Thomas Piketty’s recent visit to India caused much consternation for his remarks. Some postulate that an economy’s tax-to-GDP ratio is, or should be, a function of its per capita GDP, and hence it is misleading to compare India’s with those much wealthier. The second and perhaps the more important deviation in India’s tax structure from other …

Tax elite to reduce inequality: Thomas Piketty
9 years, 1 month ago

Tax elite to reduce inequality: Thomas Piketty

The Hindu  

French economist Thomas Piketty says he hopes the Indian elite will pay more taxes on wealth and income, as the country’s tax-to-GDP ratio of less than 11 per cent is insufficient to meet its challenges of inequalities. Drawing a comparison with China, the author of the best-seller >Capital in the Twenty-First Century said: “The Chinese Communist Party has been much …

Black money, the hidden wealth of nations
9 years, 1 month ago

Black money, the hidden wealth of nations

The Hindu  

This could be a bumper year for the ever-lucrative tax avoidance industry. The 2015 final reports of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development -led project on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting — which refer to the erosion of a nation’s tax base due to the accounting tricks of Multinational Enterprises and the legal but abusive shifting out of profits …

Global tax regime must protect developing nations: India- India TV News
9 years, 7 months ago

Global tax regime must protect developing nations: India- India TV News

India TV News  

Addis Ababa: India has pitched for a global tax regime built into the UN process, rather than being looked at from the point of view of rich countries, in a bid to curb illegal financial flows from the developing world running into some $200 billion annually. "That's why we were pushing so hard -- that we move towards the establishment …

The one chart that underlines the importance of economic reforms
10 years, 8 months ago

The one chart that underlines the importance of economic reforms

Live Mint  

Over the past few years, a spate of high-level corruption scandals has sharply dented the credibility of Indian capitalism. In fiscal 1991, India’s tax system was highly dependent on indirect taxes, widely considered as more regressive than direct taxes because they affect the rich and the poor alike. The share of corporate taxes alone eclipsed the share of total indirect …

Tax rich more, enhance tax-GDP ratio, demands civil society
12 years, 1 month ago

Tax rich more, enhance tax-GDP ratio, demands civil society

The Hindu  

India should tax the rich more and enhance the tax-GDP ratio by increasing revenue from direct sources of tax to fund inclusive development, civil society organisations urged in their budget proposals for 2013-14 on Tuesday. “.the Union Finance Ministry to address the lack of progressive structure in the country’s tax system and raise the much needed additional resources for financing …

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw Lashes Out At Govt Over Poor Performance
13 years, 5 months ago

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw Lashes Out At Govt Over Poor Performance

India TV News  

Bangalore, Oct 14 : Europe's wealthy have asked to be taxed more, but a top Indian technocrat has put question marks over the ability of the government in India doing a good job with such funds if a law was passed in this regard. “My view on taxation levels in India is that it is at a reasonable level and …

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