FM Meets India Inc

By Vijay Kumar

FINANCE Minister Arun Jaitley met the representatives of Industry and Trade Groups yesterday as part of his pre-budget consultations. He told the businessmen about his commitment towards implementation of the 7th Pay Commission Recommendations in the coming financial year. He has to find an additional one lakh crore rupees for that. Service Tax and Excise Duty will certainly go up.

India Inc suggested to him to implement the Pay Commission Recommendations in staggered manner.

Other suggestions:

1. Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) may be withdrawn in calibrated manner;

2. tax exemptions and allowances be withdrawn while tax rate may be rationalised in order to bring transparency;

3. certainty and less discretion to make the tax administration more transparent and efficient;

4. Tax incentives be given for use of debit and credit card;

5. payment of utilities be made mandatory by cheques or through e-payment;

6. clarity of policies by CBEC & CBDT to its field offices to avoid any discrepancies and discretions in tax administration;

7. implementation of GST at the earliest.

8. Service tax should be paid by contractors to government, only when they receive the payment from the government (this could be deducted from the government's payment). Today, contractors don't have the margin to deposit service tax every month yet receive their payments after many months. If there's a default receiving payment, then the service tax on that default should be credited back into the account of the payee.

9. Eliminate all surcharges on corporation tax, service tax, etc. This does not promote ease of doing business, when everyone has to calculate taxes to two decimal places. Adjust tax rates where necessary.

Nothing serious happens in these meetings. See the Captains of Industry have asked the Finance Minister to implement GST at the earliest. That is exactly what he has been trying to do for the last one year with hardly any headway. What can he do in this regard in the budget?