Death and taxes

A senior finance ministry official recently explained why India was reluctant to introduce a negative list for taxation of services, although many other countries had adopted it. In response to a question at an industry seminar on the impending Goods and Services Tax, the official said New Zealand, for instance, taxed funeral services but it was not possible to do so in India without hurting popular sentiment. But, as he went on to explain with his tongue firmly in his cheek, “If I forgot to put funerals on the negative list, our officers would go to the funeral site and that would be very embarrassing for me”.