Ramp Up Taxes, Piketty Exhorts India as Modi Prepares Budget
- Only 3.3% of Indians pay income tax, limiting fiscal choices
- Services tax hike, asset sales seen as possibler revenue boost
Students sit studying at the Indian Railways Eastern Railway Intermediate College in Mughalsarai, Uttar Pradesh, India, on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015. The 162-year-old system is Asia's oldest. It not only owns the tracks, train stations and marshalling yards, but schools, hospitals, recreation clubs and hotels for its staff. Sometimes, as in the case of Mughalsarai, entire cities grew as an extension of British rail infrastructure.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/BloombergWant to become a developed economy? Spend more on health and education, finance it with taxes and publish as much data as possible.
French economist Thomas Piketty doled out that unsolicited advice to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a recent string of appearances throughout India that triggered both push-back and praise in Asia’s third-largest economy. India’s tax receipts as a share of its economy need to double to about 20 percent in the next decade, he said.