Govt hiking tax rates for common man, giving concessions to billionaires: Rahul

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said while the Narendra Modi government is hiking the rates of the income tax and other taxes for the common man, it is giving concessions to billionaires, and claimed that it is set to introduce another slab of the GST to burden people.

Gandhi said the Congress will continue to oppose this "injustice" of imposing higher tax rates on things of daily use and giving concessions to big billionaires.

"See another example of concessions to capitalists and looting common people.

"On one hand, the income tax is increasing constantly in comparison to the corporate tax. On the other hand, the Modi government is preparing to collect more money through Gabbar Singh Tax," he said in a post in Hindi on X.

"It is heard that amidst the ever-increasing collection from the GST, the government is going to introduce a new tax slab -- there is a plan to increase the GST on things of daily need.

"Just think -- the wedding season is going on, people must have been saving every penny of their money and in the meantime, the government is going to increase the GST on clothes priced above Rs 1,500 from 12 per cent to 18 per cent," the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha said.

"This is a grave injustice -- taxing the hard-earned money of poor and middle-class families in order to give tax breaks to billionaires and waive their massive debts," he claimed.

"Our fight is against this injustice. We will raise our voice strongly against the burden of taxes on the common people and put pressure on the government to stop this 'loot'," the Congress leader added.

He also shared a graphic that showed that the government's collection from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) has gone up from Rs 5.98 lakh crore to Rs 10.61 lakh crore from 2019 to 2024, while that from the income tax has increased from Rs 4.92 lakh crore in 2019 to Rs 11.87 lakh crore in 2024 and from the corporate tax from Rs 5.56 lakh crore to Rs 10.2 lakh crore in the last five years.

Congress general secretary, communications, Jairam Ramesh also hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre over the state of the country's economy and cited the comments of a senior Reserve Bank of India (RBI) official.

He said RBI's Deputy Governor Michael Patra has summarised the current economic situation very well in an interview.

"Dr Patra says the economy is not moving ahead as fast as it should because -- private investment is not picking up; manufacturing growth is sluggish.

"Both are being caused by lack of demand from consumers who are being hit by inflation," the Congress leader said in a post on X.