MADHU AGRAWAL
(Guinness Record Holder for letters in Newspapers)
Prime Minister in his Man ki Baat on 26.06.2016 gave, rightly so, stern warning for disclosing unaccounted income by 30th September 2016. He rightly pointed out towards the bitter reality of just 1.5 lakh people declaring annual income above rupees 50 lakhs. Charity should begin at home. Raids should be conducted on offices of political parties and big political bosses cutting across party-lines having spent so much on mega-rallies and other wasteful poll-expenditure. Unfortunately political requirements compel even ruling party at the centre compromising with regional political bosses known for unaccounted income and wealth.
Tax-evasion and undisclosed incomes must rather be auto-detected by best utilisation of Information Technology whereby it may not be practically possible to evade taxes and have undisclosed assets, rather than unnecessarily expecting and waiting people to disclose voluntarily. Study should be made about US-system where every single penny spent by an individual automatically goes to database making tax-authorities detect spending more than income/wealth. All possible steps should be taken to replace currency-circulation by banking-transaction. Useless and misused tax-exemptions like including 80G, 80GGB and 80GGC relating to donations for social cause and contributions received-by/made-to political parties should be abolished.
Agricultural income should be taxed where super-rich rather than ordinary farmers take benefit to evade taxes. Heavy spent of black money in marriages and otherwise should be checked by reducing cash-transaction limit to just rupees 20000. Import and sale of gold should only be through banks because gold-traders issue multiple numbers of cash-receipts even for bulk sale made to those parking black money in gold.
