Arun Jaitley surprised me by delivering absolutely nothing in the fourth budget of his tenure as Union Finance Minister for taxpayers like me. Yet, what’s right with this year’s budget is a continuation of his earlier policies—Jan Dhan, Aadhar and Mobile and addressing India’s infrastructure needs. He did not tinker much with the income tax slabs and neither did he change the holding period of equity investments, which would then have had an impact on stock market investments.
For the first time I found any minister being sympathetic to us salaried taxpayers who by virtue of the income tax system; pay taxes before the salary comes into our accounts. Those in business, first spend the money, claim expenses on business and then settle to pay taxes. That is why; the income tax paid by many businessmen is minuscule. Many small business owners just file returns, and they manage to show their income as so low, that it barely ever crosses the basic tax bracket.
By acknowledging my contributions as a taxpayer in his budget speech, he...
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