Independence Day Wish List – Can't We Make Taxes Simple?
IT's not all that simple: Rajiv Gandhi dreamed of an Income Tax return that any taxpayer can fill without help from professionals. That dream got so complicated now that even experienced consultants find it extremely difficult to file complicated returns. And today the Consultancy industry has become almost as big as the software industry.
Maybe the CBDT and CBEC should first make their Chairmen fill up all those forms without any help and only those forms, which the Chairmen can fill, should be allowed to exist. Then perhaps all the returns will vanish. And do we need all those thousands of pages of Codes, Acts, Rules, Notifications, Regulations, Circulars…..?
We have to live with taxes, so that our politicians can earn lakhs of Crores and still leave the crumbs for running the country, but can we ever have a system that is simple and fair?
Should we have people behaving strangely just because of taxes. Why should an investor from Tamil Nadu set up a factory in Uttarakhand - just because the taxes are less there? Should I buy a house just to save some income tax? And should so many agencies tax me? The list would be endless – Local Municipality, State and Central Departments. Can't there be just one single simple tax?
Well, these are images in a fools' paradise – you can't really make things simple and every attempt at simplification, ends up more complicated than what we started with.