"The government's tax policy must look out for the small guy, the big fish in this country are quite wily."
That's how Finance Minister Arun Jaitley justified Budget 2017's direct tax changes in an interview with BloombergQuint's Sanjay Pugalia. The budget reduced corporate tax on companies with revenues less than Rs 50 crore to 25 percent, and cut personal tax on income between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 5 lakh to 5 percent.
Jaitley defended the implementation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision on November 8, 2016 to invalidate currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 as one that "was carried out in an ideal manner”, with Rs 10 lakh crore of remonetisation already done.
When asked by BloombergQuint about the plan to resolve the bad loan situation, the Finance Minister stressed that "there is a limit to the amount of taxpayer money that the government can deploy as bank capital. He asked India Inc to "stand on its own feet again, after having expanded disproportionately in boom years of 2003-2008”.
Among the most politically consequential decisions of Budget 2017 has been to squeeze anonymous cash donations made to political parties. Having introduced the concept of 'electoral bonds' in his speech on Wednesday morning, Jaitley told BloombergQuint that funds collected via this instrument would be "clean, and partly transparent”.
"No one should be able to make a mockery of India's legal system, which is why the government is working on a punishment provision," the finance minister told BloombergQuint in the interview telecast on the national broadcaster DD News, explaining proposed amendments to the RBI Act which would give the authorities powers to confiscate assets of economic offenders who have fled India.
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