Government soon to come up with list of tax exemptions
In a move resolving tax issues, the Central government on Wednesday said that it would soon come up with a list of exemptions that would help in reducing corporate tax over the coming four years. An official statement in this regard was made by the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley speaking at the ‘India Summit 2015’ organised by UK-based Economist magazine in New Delhi on Wednesday. The Finance Minister announced that the government would, in the next few days, would issue a list of exemptions that would help in bringing down the corporate tax rate to 25% over the next four years. “Over the next few days we will come out with a list of exemptions, which we intend to phase out in the first place. Over the next four years corporate tax will come down by 5% and lot of exemptions will get phased out. Slowly we will bring taxation levels to global standards and make tax assessment and returns simpler by just eliminating a lot of exemptions,” said Jaitley. It is noteworthy that the Finance Minister had, in the Union Budget 2015-16, announced a roadmap to reduce the rate of corporate tax from 30% to 25%. The Minister also informed that the government is also under efforts to resolve tax issues outside the judicial system. Meanwhile, speaking on the international trade agreements, the Minister said that India will not enter ‘indiscriminately’ into Free Trade Agreements (FTA) and also ensured that such deals would be mutually beneficial. “We are certainly going to look at trade deals which are mutually beneficial to both the trading partners. Trade deal merely because it is part of economic diplomacy is not essential," Jaitley said, in response to media queries on ‘EU banning the sale of around 700 Indian pharma products’ the last month.
September 10, 2015 | 2:38pm IST.
to success.