Rahul says govt taxing common people more than corporates, BJP hits back

New Delhi: Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday accused the government of imposing high taxes on common people and giving rebates to its “friends”.

He also tweeted a graph suggesting the government is earning more revenue from taxes on common people than from corporates.

The BJP, however, accused him of fudging data to mislead the country.

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“It can only happen in Rahul Gandhi School of Economics where every data is fudged to mislead the country. The so called taxes from people and Corporate Tax combined does not total to 100%,” BJP IT department head Amit Malviya said.

Targeting the government, Gandhi said, “Raise taxes on people, cut taxes for Mitron – the ‘natural course’ of action for suit-boot-loot sarkar,” Gandhi said in his tweet, while sharing the graph.

The graph gave a comparison of “less tax on people versus more tax on people”. It shows that corporate tax over the years has been coming down and tax on people is going up.

The graph also showed that the percentage of revenues collected by the government over the years is higher from people than from corporates.

The graph showed that in 2010 the revenue collected through tax on corporates was over 40 percent against 24 percent revenue from tax on people.

In 2021, it showed, the revenue collected from tax on corporates has come down to around 24 percent against around 48 percent from that collected from tax on people.

Malviya noted that indirect tax, a consumption-based tax, which includes excise, customs, cess and a significant amount of indirect taxes (including GST), is paid by corporations, trusts, governments and not only by individuals.

The corporate tax collection has seen a rapid growth of 34 percent in the first four months of the fiscal year 2023 as compared to the corresponding period last year, he said, adding even when compared to collections of FY 2019 (pre-COVID), the collections of FY 2022 are higher by over nine percent.

He added, “The growth in personal income tax has been robust in last few years and taxpayer base has been increased to 9 crore in 2021-22, against 5.7 crore taxpayers in 2013-14. This has been a result of various efforts of the Government of India to curb black money.”

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh also shared a letter from Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot opposing the hike in GST on essential items and countered Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s claim that no state had opposed the GST on food items at the GST Council meeting.

“The finance minister has been claiming that in the meetings of the GST Council, the states did not oppose the imposition of GST on food items. This is a letter written to him by the chief minister of Rajasthan on 05.08.2022, which refutes her claims,” Ramesh said while sharing the letter.

Ashok Gehlot had on August 5 written to the finance minister opposing the decision to impose higher GST on food items and urging her to reconsider her decision.

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