Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had asked inputs from citizens on the Union Budget 2019-20 with a view to make the Budget making exercise more participative and inclusive, accordingly Vidarbha Taxpayers Association (VTA) called a General Body Meeting which was presided by J. P. Sharma to discuss and send suggestions to the Finance Ministry.
J. P. Sharma – president of VTA suggested that it is high time that Central Government brings in Direct Tax Code (DTC), wherein the Financial Year (FY) should be rescheduled to January to December so that we match the universal pattern of accounting.
Tejinder Singh Renu – secretary submitted that VTA has been constantly writing to Finance Ministry that threshold limit of direct tax should be raised from existing Rs.2.5 lakh to Rs.5 lakh in DTC; likewise the tax slabs should also be 10% above Rs.5 lakh to Rs.10 lakh, 20% above Rs.10 lakh to Rs.20 lakh and 30% above Rs.20 lakh. More accountability on assessing officers should be introduced so that sense of responsibility is there on both the sides.
Shrawankumar Malu – vice president of VTA suggested that bank lending and its procedure has been rigid too much whereby even genuine burrowers, business houses and industries are facing tough times to manage financial deals; hence it’s highly recommended that Finance Ministry relaxes banking procedure to its realistic position wherein financial institutions as well as business can grow side steadily. Likewise more liberty should be given to bank heads in same city itself so that file data transfer and delay is eliminated.
Industrialist Surendrakumar Jaiswal suggested that threshold limit of Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) should be increased from Rs.10 crore to Rs.50 crore. Furthermore definition of MSME of Centre and State varies which creates too many complex situations; hence they should be common for factual growth of this sector.
Saqib Parekh suggested that terminology of Assessment Year (AY) should be totally eliminated in DTC as this FY & AY creates too much of confusion for common man and with Jan to Dec financial year the year mention would also be single, which will bring much needed clarity.
VTA Members present in the meeting were Treasurer Pawan K. Chopra, Joint Secretaries Hemant Trivedi & Amarjeet Singh Chawla, Executive Body Members Ashvin Agrawal, CA Hemant Sarda, Govind Patel, Veeru Balani, Rahul Agrawal, Narendrapal Singh Osan, Pankaj Roshan, Harmanjeet Singh Baweja, Pratish Gujrathi and others.
