‘Purpose behind tax move is to offer a simplified system’
withdrawn from the old system, that is incorrect.
Tax exemptions have been nudging people to save. With the new option (lower tax without exemptions), do you think that domestic savings will take a hit? Especially when India does not have any robust social security system?
You see, this is our assumption. Everyone has a different financial situation. Everyone is the best judge of his interests. And, therefore, we should trust that the person will be able to take an informed decision on whether he should invest or he should take deductions. One could make investments in those savings instruments and yet be gainer in the new system. Now the nudging doesn’t happen only through taxation system...because each exemption or deduction provides scope for interpretation and brings in subjectivity and discretion, therefore, complaints. For example, somebody has claimed HRA, then the question comes: where is the rent receipt [or] whether the rent receipt is genuine or bogus. Somebody has claimed for medical treatment, then question arises: whether that treatment has actually happened or not? Whether the disease qualify for that kind of tax benefit or not?
So while introducing a transparent system, we have not removed the earlier system. If people find the new option attractive, they will come. Otherwise
they will not come.
How many taxpayers would switch over to the new system?
...we will have to wait and see. We have to wait for a few quarters. We do not know in what manner salaries would be restructured, both from the employer’s side as well the employee side. But what we have estimated is the revenue forgone [₹40,000 crore]. We expected 50% of people in various categories, particularly in the lower bracket and the middle class taxpayers, will find it more convenient to switch over to the new system.
Will there be a rethink on at least standard deduction?
There is no withdrawal, therefore no rethinking. People can take standard deduction by remaining in the old system.
Domestic investors are unhappy. They have to pay tax on dividend income while FIIS (foreign institutional investors) do not.
Domestic investors, particularly in the lower income group, should be happy, because in the earlier system, the DDT [Dividend Distribution Tax] was taxed at around 20%, 25% and 30% depending upon whether it is an equity or debt instrument. If a person who was earning less than ₹ 5 lakh, now if he gets dividend, he does not have to pay any tax on it.
Whereas in the earlier system, 20%, 25% or 30% tax was deducted.
The prison guards were alerted about the escape by other inmates, who included a brother of one of the escaped prisoners. Vishal’s brother Gaurav, also in the same barrack, chose not to flee with them, said Sinha “We are investigating the role of other prisoners for knowing if anyone had helped the trio to escape,” he said. Reacting to the development, opposition Shiromani Akali Dal demanded an immediate dismissal of the jails minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa besides a probe by a sitting judge of the high court. Police have registered a case under sections 223 , 224 (resistance or obstruction by a person to his lawful apprehension), 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees), 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and 52 of the Prisons Act at the Islamabad police station.
NEW DELHI: A group of Indian scholars and academics from across the country have voiced their concern over the questioning of IIT Guwahati professor Arupjyoti Saikia by National Investigation Agency (NIA), allegedly for his involvement in the violent anti-citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests that broke out in state. “Professor Saikia is an adornment to the literary and intellectual world of Assam and of India. He is also an individual of high moral character; gentle, soft-spoken, and utterly non-violent. His devotion to his students at IIT Guwahati is exemplary. That a scholar of such standing, and a human being of such decency, has been called for intensive grilling by National Investigative Agency is deeply distressing.