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Govt looms behind every transaction like an invisible monster: K H Subramaniam

Extent and scope of excise duty is so wide that nothing arrives on the shop counter from which the government has not extracted its unearned profit, wrote K H Subramaniam in 1979.

The annual visitation known as the Union Budget has once again struck the nation and the people are writhing in its gruesome grip. It is sure to maim many and murder many others. The Lok Sabha will expend some empty rhetoric and set its seal of approval on the budget proposals, perhaps after some token “concessions” by the finance minister in his generosity towards his countrymen. But it will still be one more turn of the screw on the Indian citizen who has suffered so much stoically in the last three decades since Independence.

Successive finance ministers of the central government have assiduously fostered the notion that bleeding the rich is a legitimate part of their ministerial duties. The poor have always been led to believe that their turn would not come. But a tax-maniac government, such as ours, is like a man-eater. Everyone is just prey. The fact is, the weaker are gobbled earlier and easier. 

Of all the levies concocted by the ruling parties of the day, nothing is more obnoxious than that hidden tax which the citizen, rich or poor, pays every day—the excise duty. Its extent and scope is so wide that nothing arrives on the shop counter from which the government has not extracted its unearned profit. Like an invisible monster, the government looms behind every transaction to collect its ransom.

And there are no ethics to inhibit the grabbing arm of the government. It can call a thing “luxury” and take, by way of Excise, Octroi and Sales Tax, more than what the producer earns by staking his capital and investing his labour. In fact, like an audacious highwayman, government can change the rules of the game at will and call anything a “luxury”. 

From 28 February, toothpaste and toothbrush will live cheek by jowl with the fridge and car in luxury-land. Let not the “Neem stalk” chuckle, for we have many more........

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