Vidarbha Taxpayers Association (VTA) held its Executive Body Meeting on terrace following Covid protocols, which was chaired by its president Shrawankumar Malu on upcoming union budget for the year 2022-23 and also sent suggestions by memorandum to Narendra Modi – Prime Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman – Finance Minister and J. B. Mohapatra – Chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes, New Delhi.
At the outset, VTA president Shrawankumar Malu congratulated the union government for continued revenue growth through GST and as India grows revenue stronger with indirect taxes and suggested direct tax rates and slabs needs to amend suitably to bring more taxpayers on record. The threshold limit of income tax should be fixed at Rs. 4 Lakh, while tax slabs from 5-10 Lakhs be 10%, 10-20 be 15% while above 20 Lakh it should be 25%. Such a tax regime will help in developing tax culture in our country and shall promote true disclosure of income by all.
VTA suggested that to encourage Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by the Corporate, it’s suggested that such spending is allowed as expenditure for the purpose of income tax. Further, the monetary limit u/s 54EC of investment in specified bonds should be increased from present Rs. 50 Lakhs to at least Rs. 1 Crore on sale of each long-term asset.
VTA also suggested that presently hotels projects built with an investment of Rs. 200 crores or more are accepted as infrastructure status. This threshold limit of Rs. 200 crores needs to be brought down to Rs.10 crores per hotel to give a boost to the budget segment in the hotel industry. This will facilitate hotels to avail term loans at lower rates of interest and also have a longer repayment period. This will also help in encouraging new hotels in various parts of the country.
Special tax incentives should be announced for domestic tourism as due to pandemic, international tourism will most likely remain hit for another year or so; hence in order to support already hit domestic hotels in the country. When tax incentives will be announced, local tourists will be attracted to tour our own country which has immense attraction of all dimensions, which will give much needed enhancement to the local tourism industry.
VTA suggested that truck on rail is soon to be made applicable on selected routes initially, however if the government promotes this with some incentives, it will save huge logistics costs and also help the environment. Also present in the meeting were Tejinder Singh Renu – secretary, Hemant Trivedi – vice president, Amarjeet Singh Chawla & Rajesh Kanoongo – joint secretaries, Sanjay K. Agrawal, Krishna Dayma, Govind Patel, Hemant Sharma, Rohit Kanoongo and Pratish Gujarathi – executive body members.
