FM asks industry to offer quantified tax alternatives, not just grievances

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday urged the industry and tax professionals to submit concrete tax policy alternatives instead of general grievances, and also to quantify compliance costs, affected taxpayers and revenue implications. She said tax policy must remain fair, predictable and supportive of investment, enterprise and innovation.

During her address at the ITRAF 8th International Tax Conference in Bengaluru, Karnataka, she said, “Share with us drafted tax policy alternatives and not only general grievances. A representation that identifies a problem is useful, but a provision accompanied by a carefully considered substitute travels much further within the government. Second, quantify what you tell us.”

Additionally, she also emphasised to scale up research and find ways that will help measure the compliance cost of a provision, identify the number of taxpayers affected, or models the revenue implications of an alternative way. She noted that if the industry and tax experts get to share such details with the government, these feedback “will be useful for the policymakers than criticism that remains only qualitative.”

She acknowledged that the government does take into account that India has its own unique sets of challenges on its path to growth and development and these challenges are not stagnant and they are evolving with time and will continue to be so. And thus, the government aims to address them “continuously and pragmatically.”

However, she highlighted that the focus of the government is to ensure that the tax policy doesn’t add more to those challenges or become a deterrent to investment, enterprise and innovation. “It must provide the revenues required for our development while remaining fair, predictable, administrable and supportive of economic activity. And that requires a continuing dialogue between the government, industry, professionals, academics and institutions such as it,” added the minister.

The Minister urged the industry to help the government to identify emerging issues early, examine them objectively and work towards practical solutions.