Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday said that India now needs to move to a lower level of taxation to be globally competitive.
What you need is lower level of taxation, to provide services more competitive in nature. Competition is not domestic, it is global. There is a need to lower level of taxation as we broad base economy. This is one important change you will witness while you will be in service.
Extraordinary high taxation rates in the past have led to higher tax evasions, the Finance Minister added.
Emphasising that the country needs to move to a tax-friendly environment, the Finance Minister said that the authorities need to be fair in interpreting the tax laws.
Tax authorities are judged by the quality of what they write or what they decide. Level of fairness followed by tax authorities will define the quality of interpretation of tax laws by tax authorities. There are no grey areas in taxation laws.
On Friday he had expressed hope that demonetisation will help increase government revenue and lower fiscal deficit, leading to higher expenditure on defence and rural infrastructure.
With the junking of the old high-value currency, the parallel economy has become part of the formal system, which leads to higher accountability and taxation that boost economic growth and transparency.
He illustrated this point by saying that shifting towards less cash economy will help bridge fiscal deficit and bring about improvement in rural India. At the same time, it will augment capability of administration, increase defence expenditure and improve spending on the poor.
The government aims to bring down fiscal deficit to 3.99 percent of GDP this fiscal.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled two schemes, Lucky Grahak Yojana and Digi Dhan Vyapaar Yojana, for customers and traders alike to promote mobile banking and e-payments.
Everyday, 15,000 people are going to receive rewards of Rs 1,000 each, starting from Christmas. In the next 100 days, lakhs of families are going to receive crores of rupees as gifts, but you will be entitled to this gift only if you make use of mobile banking, e-banking, RuPay card, UPI, USSD – such means and methods of digital payment.Narendra Modi
On 14 April, on the occasion of birth anniversary of Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar, there will be a mega bumper draw where rewards will be in crores of rupees.
(With inputs from PTI, IANS)
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