NEW DELHI, July 1: The Finance Ministry under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will very quickly “resolve” uncertainty among investors caused by anti-tax avoidance rules which were unveiled in the Budget, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said today.
“As soon as Budget was presented, it was clear that General Anti Avoidance Rules (GAAR) is going to create problem,” he said in an interview to Karan Thappar on CNN-IBN’s ‘Devil’s Advocate’ programme.
However, he said, the Finance Ministry, now under the Prime Minister, “will resolve uncertainty among investors”.
When asked if former Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was a problem, he said, “No, I think this is something we don’t want to be carried away … Newspapers are always trying to put one minister against another.
“The Art of taxation is difficult … You have to give credit to the previous Finance Minister, after all he postponed the application of GAAR”.
He said that GAAR is a larger issue and it “caused lots of uncertainties among investors … The government actually recognised that by postponing implementation of GAAR”.
Referring to the Finance Ministry’s draft guidelines on GAAR provisions, he said they have taken care of some of the problems.
“I think the government should look carefully at informed opinion and informed comments on whether these rules take care of all the problems that are creating difficulty and then address them,” he added.
On retrospective tax amendments, the Deputy Chairman said he does not think it was introduced because of Vodafone tax issue.
“It is possible that high profile attention Vodafone got complicated everything else. I am talking about all the other things,” he said adding the issue of Vodafone tax will have to be handled by the Finance Ministry. (PTI)
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