26th February, 2010
The Budget presented by the Finance Minister, Shri Pranab Mukherjee today is totally disappointing in so far as common people and especially the workers are concerned. The Finance Minister has allowed tax concessions to the extent of Rs. 26,000 crores under Direct taxes and decided to garner additional revenue of Rs. 46500 crores from indirect taxes including service taxes. The share of Service taxes is to the tune of Rs. 3000 crores. He has proposed to raise the excise duty by 2% across the board. Most of the concessions in the indirect taxes come in the form of customs duty on imports.
The increase in the revenue resources from indirect taxation has been made on the specious plea that the global economic recession has turned the corner and the Indian economy is poised for 8% growth. For sustaining the growth in the economy, the common has to be burdened further and the rich to be spared of taxation, seems to be the ideology of the Finance Minister. Due to the unprecedented rise in prices of essential commodities especially food items, the common man is made to bear the brunt and nothing has been proposed by the Finance Minister to help him out. Due to the proposed increase in the excise duty on petroleum products and rolling back the concession offered earlier as part of the stimulus package, there would be further increase in the prices of all essential commodities injecting further inflation.
In the case of salaried tax payers, the Finance Minister has not thought it necessary to increase the non taxable maximum, whereas he has offered concession in the rate structure of those tax payers who are in higher income bracket of Rs. 3 lakhs and above. While those in the income bracket of Rs. 3 lakhs and 8 lakhs would be enjoying a lesser tax burden, even the unskilled workers would be drawn into the ambit of income tax liability for the minimum taxation limit has been pegged down to what it was in 2009-10 For no valid reason, the standard deduction available to the salaried tax payers was withdrawn in 2005. The repeated pleas made by the workers year after year have gone into the deaf ears of the Finance Minister. The deduction was not restored whereas such deduction continue to be made available to other category of tax payers.
In the situation in which the workers are placed presently, there is no alternative to organizing united and militant struggles to force the Government to withdraw taxation proposals that inflicts unbearable burden on people at the lower strata of the society.
K.K.N. Kutty
Secretary General.
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K.Ragavendran
Secretary General NFPE
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