Krishna Ramachandran, Chief Financial Officer, ACIS - A company of Allianz

In the past, Budget has always been a time where people and corporates looked forward to reduction in tax slabs or for some new breaks. Now that the tax structure has stabilised and become structured, it is important for the budget to look at structural reforms and stability in the government spending as well as the social and environmental infrastructure of the country. My recommendations or wish list for the budgets are as under:
Government reforms: a) Corporatize Railways, Indian Posts, Ports, Airports authority and Highways authority, thereby moving out the financial and administrative responsibility from the government. This will also enhance investment in infrastructure by providing these companies access to domestic and international debt and equity markets. b) Reduce the manpower at the clerical level as per the earlier Pay Commission reports. c) Enhance the digitisation in the government tax departments to plug revenue leakage and enhance tax flows. d) Speeden up e-governance to improve transparency and speed. Points c and can be funded by way of a special technology cess on tax collections, replacing what was originally an oil cess. Cess money is retained by the Central Government
Build social and environmental infrastructure: a) Set up a national monitoring watchdog for social and environmental infrastructure, which in addition to being a watchdog will also monitor and report on the implementation of the conditions laid out by the environment ministry for clearances of large projects. b) Provide fiscal disincentives to corporates who damage the existing social and environmental resources. c) Provide enhanced benefits to those corprates who are investing in social infrastructure. d) Set up a national program to channelize CSR funds of small corporates and individuals into a structured program, like rural schooling, healthcare or sanitation. e) Set up targets or conditions for social development or CSR for approvals of large projects including FIPB projects.
Additional taxes: Of course there is still some potential for additional taxes which can be used to fund our social and environmental infrastructure or rather prevent environmental damage. These include, a) Tax agricultural income a certain limit, say Rs 500,000 per annum. Additional taxes can be used for environmental protection. b) Excise duty on beedis to be enhanced for both handmade and machine made. Additional funds to be used solely for healthcare. c) Education cess on mining and petroleum extraction solely to fund rural schooling. d) Registration fees and License fees on private courier and transport companies, to find the deficit of the government postal services in rural areas.