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Tharoor Lectures Fin Min Over Travancore Kingdom’s Low Income Tax Rate, Forgets 97.75 Per Cent Tax In Indira Rule
Shashi Tharoor (Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times)
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on late Monday (3 February) evening criticised Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for not reducing the Income Tax rates by giving an example of the pre-Independence Travancore kingdom.
In the image it is seen that the Tranavcore kingdom had kept Income Tax rates pretty low, which translated to a maximum taxable amount of 4 anna and 14 pies. Tharoor thus asked Sitharaman to learn from the same and drastically reduce the Income Tax rates.
As soon as he tweeted it, Tharoor was called out for his hypocrisy after having completely ignored the astronomical Income Tax rates when his party leader Indira Gandhi was the prime minister.
As chronicled in various reports, the peak Income Tax during Indira Gandhi’s rule stood at [PDF] a whopping 97.75 per cent for year 1973-74 along with a 3.5 per cent wealth tax. Even for the year 1971-72 there were 11 income tax slab with the highest one rising to 93.50 per cent.
These astronomical rates crippled big businesses which were already reeling under the effects of bank nationalisation. These high rates are also said to have resulted in increased tax evasion.
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