-The Hindu Business Line They milk tax breaks in ways that smaller firms can’t, paying only 23.9% tax on average New Delhi: India’s most profitable companies paid 23.9 per cent tax on an average on their profits for financial year 2016-17, about 10.7 percentage points lower than the statutory rate of 34.6 per cent, helped by a wide range of concessions and incentives, the latest Budget documents show. These companies, 335 in all,...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: The Income-tax Act is intricate — sometimes income received by an individual even if it relates to employment, does not fit within the technical definitions of 'salary' or 'profits received in lieu of salary'. Thus, very often, such income could not be taxed. Budget 2018-19 proposes to change this scenario. A wide range of income received — say non-compete payments (which sometimes did not fit the above...

-The Indian Express More transparency is needed for Indian society to have an informed debate about rising inequality In a recent study titled ‘Indian income inequality dynamics (1922-2014): From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?’ published on WID.world, we presented new estimates of the distribution of national income in India, from 1922, when the Income Tax was introduced, up to 2014. In this study, we systematically combine the best available data at hand...

-The Hindu In a pre-election Budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley serves up a mix of populism and prudence With a clear eye on the Lok Sabha election, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley pulled out all the stops in the Narendra Modi government’s last full Budget to promise a better deal for farmers, boost the rural economy and make the poor less vulnerable to health exigencies. Responding to the distress in the agriculture sector...

-The Indian Express Únion Budget 2018: Budget addresses the crises in agriculture. The devil is in the allocations All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. In Anna Karenina, only if a person is satisfied on all counts will she be happy. The allocations in the budget cover every sector, with umpteen implications, and no person’s expectations can be fulfilled on all counts. While every...