CHENNAI: Justice Satish K Agnihotri, the acting Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, on Saturday saw a direct link between black money and inflation. “The piling up of mountains of black money was a direct cause of inflation,” he said at the inaugural of a conference on ‘Taxation, Modern Perspectives and Challenges’ here.
Addressing the delegates, which included Supreme Court judge C Nagappan, lawyers, retired judges, chartered accountants and students at the event organised by the South Zone chapter of the All India Federation of Tax Practitioners, Justice Agnihotri said the public needed to know the relationship between taxation and public services. Income tax laws ought to framed in such a way that people felt paying it was in their larger interests, he said.
“Fairness of income tax needs to be discussed. There have been efforts to bring in new laws with respect to income tax, but nothing has come up,” he added.
Justice Nagappan noted that the challenges in Indian taxation were apparent and that the system needed to be dynamic. Advocating caution on sourcing materials from the internet, he said they ought to be used only after verification.
Speaking at the event, columnist and chartered accountant S Gurumurthy said India faced contemporary challenges in the context of the economy to which taxation was closely linked. He pointed out that there was a big difference between the western world from which India draws the financial and taxation principles, and the way Indian society behaves.
“West is an individualistic society. Nobody is responsible for anybody else. Family orientation of Indian society and family relationships play a major role in shaping the financial habits of Indians. In India we are a savings oriented society,” he said.