India will, in the next few days, release a list of corporate tax exemptions it intends to do away with in the coming years, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday.
"In the next few days, we will be coming out with the exemptions we intend to phase out over the next two, three years," Jaitley said at the Economist magazine's annual conference in New Delhi.
"This will make the corporate tax regime much simpler," he said.
Presenting his annual budget in February, Jaitley had announced that the government would gradually cut corporate tax by five percent during the next four years from 30 percent and roll back various tax exemptions.
Responding to a question on the government's alleged "tax terrorism", the finance minister said he had no intention of taxing retrospectively and pointed out statistically that there are no basis to the charge made against it.
"Out of 3.5 crore individuals that file tax returns, only around 300,000 cases are picked up for scrutiny, and that too by a computer software. Of these selected, roughly 200,000 accept the notice and only 100,000 go on to appeal. This is hardly a coercive process," he said.
"India needs all its resources to come into the system. An economy cannot go ahead in the long term on any other premise," Jaitley added.
