Taxation Blues
The Union budget fails to live up to the expectations of Indian Inc. on the tax front even as private investments fail to take off.
In the backdrop of the US slashing its headline corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 21 per cent, there were expectations that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would also effect a cut for companies from the 30 per cent peak rate that they pay at present. However, these hopes were dashed, as the government took a more incremental approach. Jaitley reduced the tax rate from 30 per cent to 25 per cent, but only for companies with annual turnover of up to `250 crore. Though, as he said, this covers 99 per cent companies, it leaves out the larger taxpayers those who accounted for more than 70 per cent of the corporate tax liabilities in 2016/17.
"This is a dampener, especially when developed countries have been cutting
