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> Unfair to call them Tax Defaulters |
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Unfair to call them Tax Defaulters
posted by
Vivek Sharma
07 Aug 2009, 09:00
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labels: government, companies
If you haven’t already read it, the government says reputable companies like Tata Motors, Coca Cola India, Oracle Corp and Reliance Infrastructure have all defaulted on their tax liabilities. The government’s own wards, PSU companies like BSNL, NTPC, SBI and Indian Oil, are even worse offenders, the minister of state for finance told the parliament earlier this week. It is not that these companies have willfully not paid their taxes to earn this notoriety. They all happen to have differences of opinion with the tax department about the amount of taxes they owe. These companies have disputed the tax claims made by the department and their cases are before the appellate tribunals or high courts. It is possible that many of them will get favourable decisions from the court and will not have to pay a rupee to the government. Even then, they are all branded as defaulters even before the courts give final decisions. This may be enough to file cases against the government for defaming them in public. Wonder why these companies and their lawyers have not done so? The minister also said that a total Rs 1.41 lakh crore is due from such defaulters. Sounds impressive when you hear the big number and analysts can point out how the government can cut the fiscal deficit by collecting even a part of it. Look at the list of those who owe the government and it is clear that most of it is irrecoverable. A Pune stud farm owner who was arrested for alleged hawala operations tops the list with dues of over Rs50,000 crore. How is the government going to recover this money when it has not been able to tell the world what exactly he was doing to run up this liability, years after arresting him? The wife of a Kolkata businessman allegedly owes Rs 20,000 crore, but again only the department knows why. Next on the list is Harshad Mehta, who is no more, and his accomplices in the stock market scam that happened more than 15 years back. If half of the tax disputes against the companies mentioned earlier go in their favour, the total amount the government can target to collect will not be more than Rs30,000 crore. When these are the facts, why keep repeating astronomical numbers as dues from ‘defaulters’, year after year?
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