Current Financial Year 2016-17 is not Conventional Year - FM
THE Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the current Financial Year 2016-17 is not a conventional year as many major reformative decisions have been taken during the year.
He was speaking at the Pre-Budget Consultative Meeting with the representatives of Banks and Financial Institutions yesterday. Some of the suggestions made at the meeting:
++ There is need for recapitalization of banks in the Current Financial Year 2016-17 as well as in the next Financial Year 2017-18. There is need for Full Tax Exemption for NPA provisioning by the banks keeping in view their profitability.
++ Post-demonetization, liquidity in banks have improved. This may impact saving deposit rates. This makes senior citizens more vulnerable as their income is adversely affected. So, some sort of exemption need to given to them under the Income Tax Act so that they have a decent income through their deposits.
++ In case of GST, there is need for Central Registry for GST compliance by the banks which have branches on pan India basis. In case of digitization, digital acceptance infrastructure is loss making at present. So digital acceptance infrastructure need to be incentivized.
++ There is need for exempting Banking Correspondents transactions from service tax.
++ Finance Bill should mandate that all wages should be paid by the employers through banking channel or digital mode.
++ Many shopkeepers don't sell using digital means as they do not want to pay taxes. So there is need to give some tax rebate to these shopkeepers to use digital means and for better compliance. Same way, consumer may also be given a tax rebate at the year end if his digital purchase is more than a certain amount.
++ In digital payments, issues of internet connectivity are there. Hence, each district may be allotted to a particular telecom company to improve internet connectivity.