Taxes...
India's population: > 113 crores
Number of people filing Income Tax returns: ~ 3 crores (30 million)
Nobody is naive enough to believe over 110 crore (1.1 billion) Indians either don't earn anything or don't earn enough to come under the tax bracket (annual income > Rs.150000/-).
No wonder the salaried class feels cheated -- there is no way they can evade tax -- tax gets deducted at source; the non-organized sectors however, have a lot of avenues to hoodwink the Government and pay little or no tax at all. One can only hazard a guess about how many businessmen, doctors, lawyers, etc., actually disclose their "real" incomes. Oh, and what about the politicians and their unaccounted wealth?
It's a tragedy that the IT department chooses to harass the salaried class, sending notices for non-payment of taxes, while in reality, they do not bother to check their records -- in most cases, they owe some returns back to the said salaried individuals.
The IT department's time would be well spent going after those who cheat by not paying taxes altogether or those who don't disclose their full income. The Finance Minister makes big noises about these things, but the common man is yet to see any evidence of actions against such cheats.
Number of people filing Income Tax returns: ~ 3 crores (30 million)
Nobody is naive enough to believe over 110 crore (1.1 billion) Indians either don't earn anything or don't earn enough to come under the tax bracket (annual income > Rs.150000/-).
No wonder the salaried class feels cheated -- there is no way they can evade tax -- tax gets deducted at source; the non-organized sectors however, have a lot of avenues to hoodwink the Government and pay little or no tax at all. One can only hazard a guess about how many businessmen, doctors, lawyers, etc., actually disclose their "real" incomes. Oh, and what about the politicians and their unaccounted wealth?
It's a tragedy that the IT department chooses to harass the salaried class, sending notices for non-payment of taxes, while in reality, they do not bother to check their records -- in most cases, they owe some returns back to the said salaried individuals.
The IT department's time would be well spent going after those who cheat by not paying taxes altogether or those who don't disclose their full income. The Finance Minister makes big noises about these things, but the common man is yet to see any evidence of actions against such cheats.
posted by Ananth Narayan at
6:42 PM
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