A government official said out that with hardly any economic activity, an immediate duty hike will not be productive and could be announced once the lockdown eases and demand revives.
Officers across departments and ministries have been asked to speak to people across sectors for 'SWOT' analysis of issues for revival of the economy.
Direct tax collections missed the revised target for 2019-20 by Rs 1.42 trillion at Rs 10.27 trillion, an 8 per cent fall over the previous year.
'We will not compromise on it. We will not make any deferred payments or cuts.'
Days after cutting the salaries and other allowances of MPs and ministers, the government has passed instructions to all departments to reduce their expenditure by as much as 60 per cent from their first-quarter spending plans.
Even with the Rs 20,000 crore distributed among states, it will still be a fraction of what they have been demanding in financial support and clearance of pending dues.
This brings its tax treatment on par with the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund.
'We expect the movements to come down to a trickle or even to stop at all these places,' says NDRF DG Satya Pradhan.
'It is unclear whether clothing or home items qualify as essential items. A lot of professionals are working from home, and they need electronics for their productivity. Does this qualify as essential?'
'We regularly distribute the copies of these speeches to various dignitaries, as well as to schools and colleges on various occasions,' said a source aware of the development, and these could also be distributed at all the quarantine centres across the country.
To address the supply crunch, CII has suggested leveraging the existing excess capacity in the Indian industry; rolling back import duty hike to look for alternative sources of imports; expanding credit to manufacturing units with quick loan sanctions, and one-time emergency waiver of non-performing asset regulations for three months.
The scheme offers waiver of interest, penalty, and prosecution for settling tax disputes.
Since no insurance companies share data on their claims with each other, the finance ministry and Irdai suspect that a lot of the resultant claims are duplicates.
'If you do quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, someone earning Rs 10 lakh can get a benefit of anywhere between Rs 35,000 and Rs 45,000, even if s/he is availing exemptions.' 'A large proportion of people do not avail full exemptions as they don't have money to invest in those schemes.'
'There are some encouraging signs.' 'Notice that we have not said 7%-plus, we are keeping it at 6% to 6.5%.'
The bulk of states' revenue comes from the devolution from the Centre's divisible tax pool, GST, VAT on petroleum, and excise duty on alcohol.
DDT is levied on dividends that a company pays its shareholders out of its profits. It is currently charged at the rate of 20.55 per cent, including a surcharge and education cess. Government may instead tax the shareholders receiving dividends, in a bid to help improve investor sentiment by addressing the multiplicity of taxes and bring down the effective tax rates for companies.
A robust dispute settlement system would help the government unlock tax revenues, and also aid ease of doing business.
The instruction is that audit of large units be completed within seven working days, of medium units in five working days and of small ones in three.
In fact, India's investment activity growth is also estimated to touch a 17-year low in FY20. With overall demand not showing signs of revival, investment activity may take longer to recover, economists said.
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