India Inc Must Give Right Facts On Foreign It Laws

Considerable research on foreign tax laws is done when the presentation of the Union Budget approaches to locate instances where foreign taxpayers are favourably placed vis a vis their Indian counterparts.

Such enquiries mostly relate to rates of tax, tax brackets and minimum exemptions limits to demand that:

Rates of personal taxation should be lowered;

The corporate tax rate should be substantially reduced because this is higher than the rates prevailing in other countries; and

In countries, like Belgium, Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, the UK and the US, small and medium firms are taxed at a rate lower than that for large companies. Hence progression in taxation of smaller companies should be introduced.

On many other issues, foreign tax provisions are quoted to justify more concessions in the Indian context. The objective is to extract as much concessions from the finance minister as possible.

Recently, opposing the Vijay Kelkar panel