Key Points
Right after the controversy over Rahul Gandhi's promise to conduct a financial and institutional survey to ascertain who is in possession of the wealth of the country, and then undertake an exercise to redistribute the wealth, another senior leader, Sam Pitroda, Chairman of Indian Overseas Congress, has stoked it further...
Contrary to what Pitroda said, the US government does not impose any inheritance tax but only six states do (and one of them is abolishing it next year) and the tax rate varies from 1% to 20%, There are several big exemptions for close relatives and family-owned businesses and also loopholes that can be exploited to avoid the tax...
Exemptions, carve-outs and generous lifetime donations mean inheritance and estate tax is a minor source of revenue in most countries and often make inequality worse, a study by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) had said a few years ago...
A glance at the budget documents for the early 1980s reveals GoI collected only Rs 2-4 crore in revenue from the tax every year, amounting to about 0.02% of all tax revenue, as per Jay Vinayak Ojha, a project fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, "If applied to figures for 2022-23, this would mean a revenue of about Rs 600 cr..
Many experts think inheritance tax in India at this stage is a bad idea.. Rupesh Satnaliwala, MD and CEO, Universal Trustees, had told ET a few years ago that the developed countries which impose inheritance tax have a structured social security and retirement plans in place unlike in India..
