India’ progress in ten years will become zero if Inheritance Tax is implemented: Nirmala Sitharaman

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman remarked that India's progress in the last ten years will go to “zero" if inheritance tax is implemented and the country will go back to the era when Congress imposed a 90% tax.

The senior BJP leader also stated that the inheritance tax directly targets the middle and aspirational classes as their hard work is saved in small savings from which they buy a house. 

“All this is going to be exposed to the so-called property tax," she told media persons.

“It (Inheritance Tax) directly hits the middle class and aspirational class. They work hard, sweat and toil of theirs are saved in small savings here and there, or they buy a house, and keep some fixed deposits," the minister said.

“If such wealth creators are going to be punished purely because they have some money kept behind, India's progress in the last ten years would just go for a zero. And we'll probably be going back to that era when Congress imposed a 90% tax," she added.

Sitharaman asserted that Congress is comfortable with ‘socialist model’, charging that Indians paid 90% of all that was earned as tax under the grand old party's rule in the country. 

“In 1968, there was a compulsory deposit scheme where people's deposits were all 18% or 20%. Something was taken away. There was no justification given at that time…," she recalled. 

There has been going an ongoing political row over Indian Overseas Congress president Sam Pitroda’s comments o Inheritance tax who said the Congress has always focused on the people at the bottom of the economic pyramid, whether they are OBCs, Muslims, Dalits or tribals. 

"Billionaires don't need our help. It is the poor people who need our help. Inequality has substantially increased in the last 10 years," he said.

He cited an example from US which led to the controversy. "In America, there is an inheritance tax. If one has 100 million USD worth of wealth and when he dies he can only transfer probably 45 per cent to his children, 55 per cent is grabbed by the government. That's an interesting law. It says you in your generation, made wealth and you are leaving now, you must leave your wealth for the public, not all of it, half of it, which to me sounds fair," Pitroda said.