After education cess, now health cess?
If Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan has his way and it looks like he is going to, there will be a 2% health cess on all taxes like the education cess. The Minister also declared that Medicines will be sold on the maximum retail price (MRP) mentioned on them from April 1, 2006, like all other packaged commodities. All local taxes will be included in the MRP. Stating that this would not mean an increase in MRP since MRP would be frozen, Mr Paswan said this was being done to keep prices of medicines under check. Mr Paswan also let out a secret – the excise duty on pharma industry is going to be reduced to 8% and the they are also considering a proposal to raise the excise duty exemption limit of small-scale pharma units from Rs 1 crore turnover to Rs 5 crores.