India to usher in tax exemption free regime - FM

The Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Wednesday cautioned corporates that the government would examine all tax exemptions and withdraw most of them, if possible, to usher in an exemption-free tax regime in the coming years.

Exceptions, however, would be made and the tax exemptions would be restricted to the most vulnerable sections of the society such as senior citizens, and for specific fields such as promotion of research and development (R&D) and frontier knowledge areas, he said.

Announcing this at a post-Budget interaction with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here, Mr. Chidambaram said: "Every exemption... as Prime Minister has said, will be examined. Every exemption that has to be removed will be removed."

Deriding industry for seeking continued tax exemptions, he said: "Every exemption has a father, every exemption has a grandparent, parent or a foster parent," indicating thereby that while all its demands revolved around exemptions, some of them have to go.