Removal of tax exemptions to cos: Roadmap in 45 days

A road map to eliminate all tax exemptions and incentives for corporates will be unveiled in the next 45 days as a prelude to lowering of corporate tax rate to 25 per cent over a four-year period, Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das on Wednesday said.

"With regard to corporate tax reduction, the Finance Minister in the last Budget has spelt out that it will be reduced from 30 per cent to 25 per cent over the next four years and it will be accompanied by elimination of exemptions and incentives," he said at an event organised by IVCA in New Delhi.

"We are now currently working on the removal, elimination of exemptions and incentives and some time in the next 45 days or so, we will be spelling out the road map for removal of exemptions and incentives," he said.

It will be put up in the public domain so that the ministry gets the inputs from stakeholders to firm up the proposals, Das said.

"Work on that front is very much on board," he added.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in the Budget, had said the basic rate of corporate tax in India at 30 per cent is higher than the rates prevalent in other major Asian economies, making domestic industry uncompetitive, and it would be brought down to 25 per cent over four years.

Explaining the rationale for the reduction of corporate tax in a phased manner to 25 per cent, Das said the government would have been happy to do it immediately, but there were fiscal issues to attend to.

"The fiscal deficit is sacrosanct and cannot be compromised, so there is the whole issue of affordability in a single year.

“You cannot reduce the tax from 30 per cent to 25 per cent," he said.