Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev said on Monday that he may support Congress in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls provided the party supports his proposal to replace all taxes with single tax on banking transactions.
“..If Congress accepts our proposal of single window taxation and single tax we will support it… we give Congress support but first they take initiative,” Ramdev told reporters on the sidelines of a conference organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
Ramdev has proposed a single Banking Transaction Tax (BTT) to replace all direct and indirect taxes.”Country is presently under economic anarchism and tax terrorism, this banking transaction tax (BTT) is a solution to all these problems,” he said.
Brushing aside the criticism, he said, the new taxation which is based on a banking transactions is equitable and would be made a big issue in Lok Sabha polls.
“The alternative tax regime could bring prices of LPG cylinder and petrol substantially down as heavy taxes are levied on these items,” Ramdev said.
Once fully implemented, the proposed system would generate more than Rs 40 lakh crore per annum for the exchequer as against about Rs 10 lakh presently, he claimed.
However, Ramdev added he has talked about it with BJP president Rajnath Singh, and former BJP president Nitin Gadkari and they were supportive.
Congress has been critical of Ramdev’s idea of uniform taxation. Early in January, party leader Meem Afzal had said Ramdev should get study the uniform taxation policy before commenting on it.
“He can only do bogus talks. He has created certain issues all by himself but doesn’t know a bit about them… He should study detailed information about uniform taxation before commenting on it. There are many countries in Africa who levies this tax but he should get the information about its merits from there,” he had said.