Monday, December 7, 2015

CHIDAMBARAM'S TAX ON PERQUISITES

FROM THE TELEGRAPH OF 1 MARCH 2005


Pointless overkill


Corporate income that is paid out as wages and salaries is taxed in the hands of recipients. If it is not so paid out, it is taxed as profits of the company. Thus, personal income tax and corporation tax are the same tax on income; only the base differs. The richer a taxpayer, the less he needs his income, and the happier is a government to deprive him of it; that is glorified as progressive taxation or redistributive justice. There have been bizarre episodes in our history when finance ministers mistook companies for human beings and levied progressive taxes on them; but such stupidity is rare in that breed, and corporate taxes are generally proportionate.
Companies are easy to milk; and since they need to keep accounts just to stay in business, their income is easy to estimate. So they are a favourite target of tax authorities, and have generally paid more tax on their income than the richest individuals. But such heavy taxation also creates incentives for evasion. Instead of paying employees, companies pay their expenses. Since companies can write off expenses and employees cannot, income buys more if spent by companies.
The finance minister would call this outright robbery: the fisc is being denied its rightful share. Perquisites enjoyed by individual employees were always added to their income and taxed in their hands. Now Mr Chidambaram proposes to tax such perquisites at the rate applicable to companies if their benefit does not go to identifiable employees; expenditure on feeding and transporting employees is excluded. He could have said that perquisites would be disallowed as deductible expenses. But that would have been too clear.

Three questions need to be asked about this stratagem. First, how justified is this? Many enterprises provide a better environment than employees would have at home. The more valuable an employee, the more employers try to make his working life enjoyable. IT firms, for instance, have waterfalls, lounges, jacuzzis and meditation rooms to beguile workers. They do not do this out of magnanimity, but because they have to compete for workers. These are not perquisites; they are business expenses. Second, how easy would such expenses be to identify? The borderline between facilities for, say, clients and those for employees is bound to be hazy. And the hazier it is, the more scope it will give tax officials to harass and earn illegal gratification. And finally, how much more revenue will it bring? The finance minister proposes to dig through a mountain to make little molehills.