It is certainly gratifying when citizens accept the point you have been trying to relentlessly make in the public domain for years. Guess what? Indians have now started speaking and calculating the tax they pay to the Government and compare it with what they get in return from the country. Agreed July is the month people are forced to pay their taxes, so the noise is at its peak and the Government must be hoping it dies down fast with the passage of time.
To keep the tax collection figures obscure and to avoid public glare, the Government has now decided to stop making public the monthly GST figures they collect. They want to make sure Indians forget to add up the total tax they pay to the government on their income, expenditure, capital gains, securities transaction, tolls, cess, and what not.
To make the math difficult, taxes in India have been bifurcated into direct and indirect, and while it may be easy for citizens to add up their direct taxes, it is the indirect taxes that people fail to compile because they seem small in number and tedious to remember, without realizing that it does add up to a sizeable figure by the end of the year, and for the government a massive bonanza.
At the moment, India’s exorbitant tax payment debate has been mostly confined to social media and yet to appear full scale on mainstream media, but all big changes usually start small and when these murmurs on social increases its decibel, the mainstream will have no choice but to start to unravel the tax math. Government or political parties would never want its citizens to know how much an individual pays tax because they then become more accountable to the tax-paying public and that is something they are absolutely not used to. They have made up their mind that they are the kings and the citizens are the subjects.
So far political parties have managed to hush the tax debate to an extent that they feel they have the confidence to start broaching the idea of yet another tax burden and use loosely terms such as wealth redistribution and inheritance tax without any fear of losing their jobs. Unfortunately tax payers have always been considered as lambs to be slaughtered as and when politicians run out of cash.
Although wealth redistribution, inheritance tax all look excellent ideas on paper to bring down inequalities in wealth, India must realize that it is not ready for such grand thinking for the simple reason that we have not progressed enough in bringing down corruption in public services. What has wealth redistribution got to do corruption? Everything! Why will you agree to part a percentage of your wealth when you know the spenders are going to blow your money on what they think is good for the country and with huge kickbacks to friends and worse cut you off from any decision making. If it is your wealth that they are taking and boss around among the poor, what is in it for the one that parts with his wealth?
One Indian who understood wealth redistribution in a way was Infosys Narayana Murthy and his team who made even their chauffeur’s millionaires by giving them employee stock options. But here is the catch, imagine Murthy and his company was corrupt and blew their IPO money on lavish unnecessary spends; Infosys would have been a closed company and the staff stock options zero. Today instead of taking Murthy’s advice on what is the way forward, as far as wealth redistribution is concerned, the country has managed to keep him in mute mode. His freedom of speech seems compromised, because he hardly speaks on any government bloopers, which was something he would regularly do a decade back.
Freedom of speech is something India has work to do, before it broaches the idea of some fancy redistribution of wealth and inheritance tax, we need everyone to chip in with their ideas for the country. The argument that our taxation is almost the same as developed nations does not hold good here. We cannot have first world taxation by giving away third world infrastructure and systems. An advice to Rahul Gandhi here, please don’t listen to Uncle Sam and come with exotic ideas of wealth redistribution which work wonderfully well in the United States of America. If Americans pay big taxes, they also avail services which almost recompense the amount they are taxed.
India first needs to learn to respect the tax payers. The budget announced this week and the tax proposals is like showing the middle finger to the citizens, especially to those who did not take part in the ‘400 par’.
When GST was announced, there was a feeling that income tax will slowly be abolished, but unfortunately the government has smelt blood, they are going to come after every income you make and will do nothing about your ever increasing expenditure, specially the salaried class who are the biggest victims facing inflation and taxation, amusingly they also turn out to be big fans of politicians, so in a way they deserve it.
Lot of reports get published around the world, politicians cannot pick and choose only those reports such as inequality of wealth, that will that have the potential to fill their coffers by making its citizens paupers. Work needs to be done on all indexes such as the corruption or human development index just to name a few.
If redistribution of wealth debate was used as an election gimmick, than it is a cruel joke played on the poor to snatch their votes. If intentions are honest there are many ways to uplift the poor and reduce inequality of wealth, the Robin Hood way is certainly not the correct one. Indians are already taxed heavy; we should be working on reducing them instead of finding new ways of taxation.
Eventually every government usually does what the people want, if we don’t make sufficient noise, especially the mainstream media, there could be more taxing times ahead.
(The author is a business consultant)