I didn’t have enough to give tax breaks

New Delhi: After his previous budget where he said he would like to give the maximum possible relief to the taxpayer, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley followed up in his second budget, by giving them no tax breaks this time round and justified it saying that the funds were being used to develop the country's infrastructure, reports First Post.

"My only regret is that I didn't have enough money in my pockets to give them a little more...The farm sector is exempted from tax and these are people earning Rs. 40,000 and Rs. 50,000 a month and you ask them to pay a part of their salary as tax... I think that is patently unfair," the Finance Minister said after presenting his budget in 2014.

However, this time round the Finance Minister said that he wanted to encourage people to save more. He pointed out that presently only 3 to 4 percent of Indians still pay income tax and he wanted to make sure that number rose and didn't fall.

"Income tax slabs can be raised but I have to see how much leeway my finances allow," he said in an interview to DD News.The Finance Minister pointed out that apart from raising money for the states, he also had to invest in infrastructure through public spending.

"We wanted to incentivise them to save for their future," he said at a second interaction, adding that it would fund infrastructure funding. In Budget 2015 the finance minister has provided various incentives including giving tax breaks for investing more in medical insurance and in the National Pension Scheme.

Jaitley told DD News that despite not raising income tax slabs he had given people an incentive to save and that too for their future. He also said he would like to see more people investing in medical insurance given the rising cost of medical treatment.The money taken from people in the form of income tax would also benefit them by developing infrastructure, he said.

I am not interested in making India a consumption-based society, Jaitley added.He also pointed out that a person could save up to Rs 4.44 lakh using the various suggestions that he had suggested in his Budget.

FIVE CHALLENGES TO ECONOMY

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday announced a budget for growth, saying the economy was ready to "fly", that the government would boost investment and ordinary people should benefit.

Here are the 5 challenges listed by him to the economy:

• Agricultural incomes are under stress

• Increasing investment in infrastructure.

• Manufacturing has declined from 18% to 17% of GDP and manufacturing exports are stagnant. Make In India program will create jobs

• Need for fiscal discipline in spite of rising demand for public investment. Unprecedented hike in share of states of revenue from federal taxes. This is cooperative federalism.

• Will meet challenging fiscal target of 4.1% of the GDP which we have inherited. Remain committed to mid-term target of 3% of GDP as fiscal target.