Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke on the ongoing debate over inheritance tax and said that it affects the middle class adversely, hampering their hard-earned assets.
“It (inheritance tax) directly hits the middle class. They work hard, sweat and toil of theirs are saved in small savings here and there, or they buy a house, a dream house, and keep some fixed deposits. All this is going to be exposed to the so-called property tax,” said Sitharaman after casting her vote.
Her comments come days after the inheritance tax came into the limelight and sparked debates after Sam Pitroda started a discussion on it.
Speaking after casting her vote in Bengaluru during the ongoing Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka, Sitharaman expressed concerns over the implications of an inheritance tax on hard-working middle-class families.
She said that penalising wealth creators solely for maintaining savings could reverse the economic gains achieved over the last decade.
“I remember earlier in 1968 there was a compulsory deposit scheme where people’s deposits were all 18%, 20%. Something was taken away. There was no justification given at that time… If such wealth creators are going to be punished purely because they have some money kept behind, India’s progress in the last ten years would just go for a zero,” said the Finance Minister.
Sitharaman also drew attention to an era under Congress governance when a 90% tax rate was imposed, mentioning the contrast between this socialist model and the current government’s approach.
“And we’ll probably be going back to that era when Congress imposed a 90% tax. You’ll probably not believe that the current generation, wouldn’t even remember or know anything about it. There was India where under the Congress rule we paid 90% of all that was earned by us as tax. That’s the socialist model which the Congress party is comfortable with,” said Sitharaman.
The ongoing Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka have witnessed intense competition between the Congress and the BJP-JD(S) coalition, with a number of candidates contesting across 14 constituencies.
