Respected Madam,
Congratulations on becoming India’s Finance Minister for the second consecutive term. I wish you all the best.
As a humble citizen of India, I present my wishlist for the 2024-25 budget.
1) Broad Base Income Tax
Modify the Income Tax structure so that maximum people are covered under it. Currently, a very small percentage of Indians pay Income Tax. Incentivize Income Tax payment and broaden this base, so that more people can share the responsibility of nation-building.
2) Reward Tax Payers
Please look into the possibility of providing some amount to the tax-paying citizens as social security in the later part of their lives if they lose their source of income and need help. This amount payout can be linked to the Income Tax they have paid in their lifetime.
3) Make Income Tax Fair For All
Salaried people cannot escape Income Tax, whereas those in business or profession have numerous ways to avoid paying tax. Because of this, people earning crores of rupees as business or professional income can get away with paying minimal or no tax whereas salaried people have to pay full tax on their earnings. It is not a level playing field. Please find out some way by which people with other sources of income can also be brought into the tax net.
4) Rationalize KYC Process
Whenever we go to any bank, financial institution or government organization, we are asked to give copies of our Aadhar Card, PAN card and photographs for KYC. In many places, we have to sign some Aadhar mandate forms also. Many of these processes result from a knee-jerk reaction to some scam or fraudulent actions that had happened in the past. I am sure collecting and storing all these papers must be a huge task for those collecting institutions. I don’t think that once stored, these papers would ever need to be retrieved. I request you to simplify this as much as possible. Utilize DigiLocker maximum for this purpose. And what is the use of taking photographs every time? Please look into this pain in the neck. It wastes a lot of human energy and time.
5) Standardize Digital Payment Info
A lot of time for every business is wasted in resolving the identity of the source of payments. When someone makes a payment and if the information is not shared with the receiver, it becomes very difficult for the receiver to trace from where the payment has come and give credit accordingly. This wastes a lot of time for the accounting teams in companies and results in Suspense Account entries. Please standardize the information mentioned in bank statements, when a payment is made. One suggestion can be to show the PAN or UPI ID of the paying party by every paying institution. Currently, there is no standard practice and hence a lot of unnecessary confusion is created.
6) Abolish “System Bandh Hai”
At most of the nationalized banks and customer-facing government organizations like LIC we suddenly encounter the response “System bandh hai” or “Server bandh hai”. Why this mystery does not happen in private banks and only Sarkari bank servers decide to shut themselves frequently? Request to look into this mysterious phenomenon.
7) Bank Branch Information Redundancy
Many of the financial transaction documents require writing the name and branch of the bank along with the account number. As I understand, the latest long account numbers also contain the bank name and branch information within them. Why should we ask people to write the name of the branch?
Also, there is no standard method to print branch names on the cheques etc. The branch names can be seen printed in a very non-standard way. Please standardize this, too, to save time and energy.
I think, these are very common expectations of a common man and they can be easily fulfilled. I hope they will be.