Business
No intent to tax retrospectively, says Jaitley
New Delhi, April 27
Clarifying that the central government does not intend to tax
retrospectively, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday reiterated that
the taxation policy has to be "non-adversarial" so as to encourage
foreign investments.
"Our taxation process has to be simpler to
increase tax buoyancy. Our taxation policy has to be non-adversarial.
The government does not intend to tax people retrospectively," Jaitley
said delivering the D.P. Kohli Memorial Lecture instituted in memory of
the Central Bureau of Investigation's first director.
"Highways
programme has slowed down and investment has not come in railways. We
have to invest Rs.70,000 crore in infrastructure sector and that is why
we have to little delay the fiscal road map," Jaitley said.
Jaitley,
in his first full union budget in February, has extended the target
deadline for controlling fiscal deficit to three percent, reasoning that
insistence on a timetable to contain the deficit would harm growth
prospects.
The targets for fiscal deficit for the next three
years have been set at 3.9 percent for 2015-16, 3.5 percent for 2016-17
and 3.0 percent for 2017-18.
The finance minister also said the
corporate tax structure has to be globally competitive and that is why
the government has proposed to reduce it from 30 to 25 percent in budget
for the current fiscal.