India’s tax rates now comparable to US: Piyush Goyal

TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi/ Commerce minister Piyush Goyal has said that he “hopes” the tax relief measures announced by the government for the corporates will give the necessary fillip to growth that has been sputtering for long.

The measures also get our tax rates comparable to those in the US and in South Asian economies, if one were to include the exemptions thrown in, Goyal said, adding these will help push investments up.

With an eye to push growth, which has slipped to a six-year low in the June quarter–which is even below that of Pakistan’s 5.4 percent–finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman earlier in the day announced a raft of changes in direct taxes, including a 10 percentage points cut in corporation taxes to 25.17.

The measures, which come a day after Reserve Bank governor Shaktikanta Das had warned against any fiscal measures to spur growth saying the government has little fiscal space to do so, will entail a revenue sacrifice of Rs 1.45 lakh crore to the exchequer this year.