Letters: Taxation policy needs data

This refers to the debate “Should there be a super-rich tax?” (February 29). A country’s taxation policy should be fair and those who are accumulating wealth at a fast pace must naturally come to the rescue of the poor. Ensuring equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth is the government’s responsibility and it is unfortunate to note that only three per cent of our population is paying tax. It is all the more appalling to see that nearly 80 per cent of the population lives on less than '20 a day, while 77 per cent of our ministers and more than 300 MPs are millionaires.

This naturally raises doubts about how effective the economic policies being pursued in the name of the aam aadmi really are. One major problem is the absence of accurate data or information. K V Kamath, chairman of ICICI Bank and Infosys, rightly observes in the Chinese Whispers column that there is a lot of growth that gets lost owing to inefficiencies in our data collection mechanism (“Growing optimism,” February 29). It is time for the government to capture data more accurately so that the policies that are pursued to eradicate the economies’ ills achieve the desired result.

T V Gopalakrishnan Mumbai

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