The Economics Department of Hindu College successfully conducted a webinar on 29th October 2021 on the topic "The wealthier you are, the lesser is the tax you pay". Mr Ram Singh, Professor, Delhi School of Economics, who has also been a visiting professor at various renowned universities, presented his findings on the relationship between tax paid, wealth and reported income for the first time on this webinar.

 

He falsified the myth that India has a progressive taxation system through his empirical study, different types of tax exemptions, financial engineering were some of the reasons that came to light behind this surprising finding. The data sources used, he explained, were a combination of new and existing data sources such as General Elections, Income Department reports and Forbes richest people list; to ensure that the data was reasonably representative. Some interesting facts like the wealthiest of Indians are not the richest ones grabbed everyone's attention. He further demonstrated the conclusions of his research that contrary to popular belief and economic reasoning, there exists a negative correlation between total taxable income and wealth.

 

He concluded his presentation by suggesting that the income tax needs to be supplemented with additional direct tax, and the additional tax should discourage the manipulation of the income capital gains mix by the wealthy to make our tax regime progressive in reality.

The lecture was followed by an interactive question and answer session which was enlightening for both students and faculty members. The session came to an end with Jai Sharma, President of the Economics Department delivering the vote of thanks.