Back

Do you know the 30:30:30 fact about Indian income tax? Just 30% of people who file their incomes, actually pay any tax. And just 30% of those people pay tax at a 30% rate. .. Most people outside that segment fall into one of the three segments. 1> They don’t earn enough to pay income taxes 2> They earn enough but are exempted 3> They earn, but hide their incomes .. <1> Will get better as the Indian economy and individual income grows <2> Would never improve, because the politicians count those people as vote banks <3> This is where most of us come in .. In the last 5 years, my income tax outgo has increased 8x. I don’t have a problem with that. But, what hurts is the fact that there are countless more who just get away, and nobody cares. And here I am paying my fair share as an idiot, year after year. .. And where does it get worse? Because of the third set of people, the Govt ends up levying higher tax rates on the ones who do pay their share. This is unfair because when I pay my taxes, I actually end up subsidising the tax outgo of crores of other such people, who hide their true income. .. But, that is my biggest complaint to the Govt. With back-to-back terms in power, higher levels of digitisation, and capture of all sorts of data with linking via PAN, Aadhaar, Demat and whatnot, why the heck have you not been able to solve this mess? -> You know people who earn enough to afford lakhs and crores of debt but aren’t reporting any taxable income. What the heck are you doing about it? -> You know who is buying those record numbers of premium cars? Why then are you unable to track ones among them who report no taxable income? -> You know people whose businesses are doing good (via GST), but don’t report any income of their own. What the heck are you doing about that? .. This is the Government’s failure. Not that of Nehru, Rajeev Gandhi, Vajpayee Ji or Manmohan Singh. This is a failure of the present administration. Because 10+ years in power are enough for you to fix things you really want to fix. Of course, there will be many who would disagree. But, please know that the views shared are personal.