Shome panel in favour of re-introducing Fringe Benefit Tax, Banking Cash Transaction Tax

03 Dec 2014 Evaluate

The tax administration reform commission headed by Parthasarathi Shome, in its third report submitted to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, suggested government to reintroduce Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) and Banking Cash Transaction Tax (BCTT) to widen the direct tax base and counter the menace of black money. The panel in its report pointed that introducing FBT and BCTT would be a temporary administrative measure for enhancing tax collection, until raising tax collection would make it unnecessary.

FBT was introduced in 2005-06 as a tax paid by employers on employee benefits that do not form part of the salary. It was levied on a prescribed portion of expenditure on 'fringe benefits' such as employee stock options or ESOPs, entertainment, festival celebrations, gifts and running of cars and aircraft. However, this was scrapped in 2009 by the then finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee.

Further, panel favored reintroduction of BCTT, citing that no instrument captured details of cash withdrawals from bank accounts, other than savings accounts and pointed that availability of such information would help the I-T department widen its information base on the use of black money since excessive cash withdrawal can help it understand the extent of the cash economy.

The panel also suggested that the government do away with tax amnesty schemes as traders simply waited for the announcement of these schemes to build their capital. The committee observed that the tax base wasn’t commensurate with growth in both corporate and individual incomes in recent years that reflect the growth in the economy.

It pressed upon the need to double the number of income taxpayers, slightly more than 3 crore to 6 crore and for this suggested to levy tax on farmers with annual income higher than the threshold limit of Rs 50 lakh.

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