IT and Telecom industry bodies have sought measures in the upcoming Budget to promote ease of doing business, incentives for R&D investments and push for domestic manufacturing. “Our main focus is on ease of doing business and level playing field. Important backdrop of our suggestion was that the industry does face headwinds globally because of protectionism and anti-globalisation forces in different country,” Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar told reporters after a meeting with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
He said Nasscom has sought reduction in safe harbour margin which is very high at 25-30 per cent, extension of R&D benefits to IT sector, clarity on cut in corporate taxes from 30 to 25 per cent and support for SMEs and start-ups. “Domestic investments are also important and currently resident investors are taxed at twice the rate than non- residents. This is an anomaly which we felt should be removed,” said Chandrashekhar.
Nasscom also flagged concerns over the procedural aspects in GST with regard to place of provision of service, valuation, tax on intra-company supply of softwares which was never done earlier. “Place of Effective management is applicable from April 1, 2016 but guidelines have not been issued. We have requested that its implementation should be done prospectively and industry should not be impacted by it,” he said.