Tax laws made complicated by exemptions, need to be simplified: Tarun Bajaj

What is the News?

According to the Revenue Secretary, there is a need to simplify direct tax laws as various exemptions announced every year have made them complicated.

What are the views of the Revenue Secretary on Taxation Structure?

On Corporate Taxation Structure: In 2019, the Finance Minister had announced a cut in corporate tax to 22% from 30% if companies don’t avail any exemptions or incentives.

Based on the analysis for 2019-20, around 65% of corporates have come into the new tax bracket while the remaining 35% continue to avail the old tax regime as their business income is low and can avail exemption.

However, there is a sunset clause for the exemption and with the sunset, there will be more corporations availing of the new tax regime. Moreover, with this new taxation structure, there has been an increase in tax revenue.

On customs duty: The government has taken a thorough review of customs duty, and some exemptions that continued for three decades but are not useful have been done away with.

On Fiscal Deficit: The fiscal deficit is currently at 6.4% and the government had the opportunity to lower it further. But increased capital expenditure by almost 35 per cent had forced India to rethink the Fiscal deficit targets. 

On Retrospective Taxation: The centre will sort out the 14-15 cases through the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021. The demand in these cases was about Rs 1.1 trillion.

Source: This post is based on the article “Tax laws made complicated by exemptions, need to be simplified: Tarun Bajaj” published in Business Standard on 12th Feb 2022.

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