P Chidambaram: PM Modi battling ghosts, inheritance tax not in Congress agenda
Chennai: Former Union finance minister P Chidambaram said on Sunday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is battling “imaginary ghosts,” pointing out that the Congress platform makes no mention of an “inheritance tax.”
The Hon. Prime Minister keeps finding and reading phrases and words that aren’t there in the Congress manifesto! Chidambaram commented on X, “He (Modi) should debate the’real’ issues included in Congress’s manifesto.”
The experienced member of Congress said that, in line with the platform, his party intended to implement tax changes.
Reading out the list of items on the agenda, he stated that Congress wanted to usher in a period of openness, justice, clarity, and impartiality in the administration of direct taxes; keep personal income tax rates steady for a period of five years; reduce the tax burden on small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs); put an end to the “duplicitous cess raj of the Modi government.”; offer sizable tax breaks to retailers and shopkeepers; and implement “GST 2.0.”
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s adviser Sam Pitroda recently brought up the existence of inheritance taxes in America, which infuriated the BJP and PM Modi in particular.
Modi had said that the previous prime minister of Madhya Pradesh, Rajiv Gandhi, had prohibited inheritance tax in order to save his family’s holdings, but the Congress was preparing to bring it back in an attempt to seize residents’ assets under the guise of wealth sharing.
