Govt should eye better collections than raising taxes for funds: Survey

New Delhi, Jan 27 : A fund-starved government will be better off looking at increased collections fuelled by an economic recovery and improved technology driven enforcement rather than through the introduction of new taxes, a KPMG survey showed on Wednesday.
According to the pre-budget survey 2021-22, only 2 per cent of the respondents feel that raising taxes would be the solution to mobilise additional revenue for the government that sees an increase in its expenditure due to the pandemic.
A majority (20 per cent) held that the Government’s revenue needs can be met through increased collections fuelled by an economic recovery as well as improved technology driven enforcement (49 per cent).
The KPMG survey conducted in January 2021 has tried to capture the expectations of all important stakeholders on various tax aspects of the budget. In all, 250 respondents across sectors participated in the survey.
Despite the expectation that government may not raise taxes, the survey has brought out that a smaller number of respondents (29 per cent) expect that a new Covid-19 cess may be imposed in the Budget.
When it came to some of the measures the government could adopt to provide relief to the salaried class, some respondents (74 per cent) felt that an enhancement in the standard deduction on salary income from the existing Rs 50,000 should be considered.