The whole country waited for a path-breaking and transformative budget in the first budget of the third term.
The Finance Minister has ticked all the right boxes in terms of focus on spending and boosting economic recovery. Providing funding for employment generation, skilling, alternate energy, and laying down the path for investments for the future.
Having said that, I believe she has missed out a once in a once-in-a-kind opportunity to do the following.
- This was an opportunity to expand the tax base by bringing in the high net-worth agriculturists into the ambit.
- This was an opportunity to radically change the direct tax structure instead of
tinkering with the layers. - If the idea is to move more people to the stock markets and have a longer-term horizon of investor investments, the increase in the Long Term Capital Gains tax does not make sense.
- Once again a promise of tax structure reforms over six months. We have seen several such promises in the past, which amount to not much action.
- While the priority talked about Next Gen Reforms, it was a mere statement of intent and no specifics. It is a mere promise with nothing substantive.
In short from a taxation perspective, I would categorize this as an ACCOUNTANTS Budget and not a CFO’s budget. It is nothing more than balancing numbers while sticking to the targets under the Fiscal responsibility roadmap.
In short, opportunity lost.
