He was replying to a question from the opposition in the Lok Sabha as why there are so many ID cards despite Aadhaar’s introduction.
On why Aadhaar being made mandatory for I-T returns, Jaitley said that many persons have been found with multiple PAN cards and that’s why the government felt the need to introduction the system.
“Today 98 percent citizens have Aadhaar. They can either give the Aadhaar number or mention that they have applied for Aadhaar but the government won’t allow them to evade tax,” Jaitley added.
The Finance Minister also said that people needed to be brought into the tax system. Jaitley said that the government that’s why lowered the tax slab this year.
Jaitley, who was speaking during a debate on Finance Bill, also quoted an article of economist Martin Wolf where he praised the demonetisation scheme of the Indian government.
“Overall, the policy allowed the government to tax black money, at least as a one-off and possibly permanently, given the enhanced risks of holding cash. Overall, there is a transfer of wealth from criminals to the government. It is hard to be sorry for these victims,” Jaitley quoted from the article.
However the opposition was quick to reply with Congress’s Mallikarjun Kharge quipped why the FM not quoted the other economists who trashed the demonetisation move.
Jaitley said despite the impact of demonetisation, Indian tax collections this fiscal will exceeed budgetary estimates.
“Tax collections have been on the increase in the last few years. We had set a direct and indirect tax collection of Rs 16.25 lakh crore for the current fiscal, which was revised upwards to Rs 17 lakh crore. We will achieve this record target by the end of whatever little remains of the fiscal,” he said.
“The collection target for next year has been set at Rs 19,05,000 crore. Rs 9.8 lakh crore is estimated to come from direct taxes while Rs 9.25 lakh crore from indirect taxes,” he added.
The minister said his optimism on taxes was based on the “transformation” of indirect taxes expected to be set in motion through the proposed pan-India Good and Services Tax (GST), which is slated to be implemented from July 1.
Jaitley said he expected the country to exceed the upwardly revised tax collection target of 17 trillion rupees in the 2016/17 fiscal year that ends on March 31.
Net tax receipts in the first 10 months of 2016/17 fiscal year were 8.16 trillion rupees, government data showed last month.
Source: The Economic Times