For excise duty, we have taken a hit of about Rs 50,000-60,000 crore and for customs duty it was overall Rs 18,000-20,000 crore,” says Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj.
The government is working towards expanding the tax base as 75 per cent of the total individual tax returns show income below Rs 5 lakh, said Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj. In an interview with Aanchal Magazine and Sunny Verma, he also said the regulatory concerns on virtual digital assets should be addressed by legislation.
What happened was that last year was very good. First quarter was a washout, people didn’t pay taxes, the second quarter was also not good, third was better and fourth was best. So we don’t anticipate the same growth as much as it happened in the earlier quarters, so it is in that context that we have kept this figure. I think we should be around that. It may be more than Rs 10,000-20,000 crore more than the RE.
For next year, if you take out the excise duty, then the increase is 14 per cent which is a good increase. We have actually not been achieving a buoyancy of 1 for the past few years so in this case though they have said that the nominal GDP will grow by 11 per cent, even if it grows a little more, so 14 per cent is a good target. The base is going to be much bigger this year because the growth this year is going to be much larger.
If you include excise, it is almost 1. But one should not take excise duty into account, it’s not even related to the GDP. It’s consumption led, if consumption increases as compared to this year to that extent maybe 2-3 per cent, not more than that. We have also reduced the excise duty. So if you take the effect of that actually there is a 15 per cent reduction in excise duty.
For excise duty, we have taken a hit of about Rs 50,000-60,000 crore and for customs duty it was overall Rs 18,000-20,000 crore.
On crypto, the tax aspect is different and regulatory side is different. From the perspective of smaller investors, this is now expanding, there is marketing of coins. Will it not lead to mis-selling? Now it might be seen as the government is taking tax for it.
