Economist Gautam Sen called the idea of inheritance tax unrealistic while terming Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s proposal of a “wealth survey” as impractical. Surveying all households and business for wealth redistribution would lead to economic chaos, the economist told news agency ANI after Rahul Gandhi’s comments on “wealth redistribution” and Congress party’s poll promise of a socio-economic census stoked a major political controversy.
Gautam Sen said that around 2.4 per cent people pay taxes in India, out of whom nor more than 1.2 million have personal assets. He said, “In order for them to be forced to surrender, you have to close their businesses down. That means the following year, there will be economic chaos.”
He added, “Whoever thought of this idea was not thinking very realistically, what we have now is a very vast improvement on what we used to have before — we have this incredible combination which has almost never been achieved, of combining wealth creation through investment, infrastructure with redistribution.”
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What Gautam Sen said on Sam Pitroda’s inheritance tax remarks
Earlier, Sam Pitroda had said that India should explore the inheritance law while citing the example of the US. On Sam Pitroda’s suggestion, the economist said, “First of all, there is no inheritance tax in the US. They don’t have inheritance tax, it is called estate duty and gift tax. In the US, it is paid by 0.14 percent of the deceased till 2022 – of 2.5 million deceased only 0.14 percent, ie 4,000 people in the entire US are subject to Estate Duty.”
