Interim Budget: No steps taken to widen tax base says HP Ranina

Ranina: The takeaways were on the expected lines, it was just a reiteration of all the achievements of the last 10 years. 80 percent of the speech was entirely devoted to that what. This is a part of the election manifesto which will be carried forward.

Of course there is a slight reduction in the excise duty on the automobile sector, in the case of cell phones and things like that which are again meant to be little bit of sops for the common man.

Now, as far as your numbers are concerned, we had just 6.9 percent rate of growth up to December and now to expect 10.6 percent is going to be a difficult time. Of course, there will be high pitched assessment but apart from that I also see lot of pressure coming in the sense that there may be more searches, seizures, and more pressures will be brought on the people to disclose more taxes.

He has already indicated that people who have money in the Swiss Bank account and maybe they will be asked to pay them tax before March 31. I think lot of pressure will now come on the tax payers and possibly they deserve it because some of them who have evaded taxes. I think they need to pay and of course if pressure is brought on them I don't see anything wrong in that and this is what the government will try to do.

Now that the finance Minister will be more involved in politics, I think the tax administration will have virtually a free hand right up to the time the new government is formed. They will try to meet the Budget numbers and I think lot of pressure will come on the tax payers.

Latha: Could you rate all three - Budget, the current finance minister and the UPA government?

Ranina: On the Vote-on-Account (VoA) I would say eight on 10 - this is what was expected and he has done much more than what he should have done.

However, coming to Chidambaram, what I expected him to do is to undo the retrospective amendment. He could have easily changed the law and said that the retrospective amendment will not be effective from April 1, 1962 but will be effective from April 16, 2012 when that Finance Bill was introduced. He could have done that in fact he had the backing of the Shome Committee recommendation. He should have said that I am only going to make a retrospective amendment prospectively now. So, this is where he has failed. In that sense I think nothing much has been done.

He has not done anything to widen the tax base, to bring in the tax evaded income which has been escaping tax; nothing has been done on that score. So, I would give him a rating of four out of 10.

As far as the UPA government is concerned I would like to break it up between two; the first three years of the last five years and then last two years. The first three years were total nightmare and that would get a rating of two out of 10. However, for the last two years the Prime Minister has pulled up his socks, the government has pulled up its socks then done a lot of good and I would give them for the last two years a rating of seven out of 10.