Amidst outrage over the Congress party’s ‘wealth redistribution’ poll promise, Chairman of Indian Overseas Congress and Rahul Gandhi’s advisor Sam Pitroda has suggested that a US-like inheritance tax should be brought in India. Pitroda while explaining the inheritance tax claimed that in the US, 55% of the wealth is grabbed by the government when a person dies and the rest goes to the family, suggesting that Congress can bring a similar policy under its wealth redistribution promise.
“In America, there is an inheritance tax. If one has $100 million worth of wealth and when he dies he can only transfer probably 45% to his children, 55% is grabbed by the government. That’s an interesting law. It says you in your generation, made wealth and you are leaving now, you must leave your wealth for the public, not all of it, half of it, which to me sounds fair. In India, you don’t have that. If somebody is worth 10 billion and he dies, his children get 10 billion and the public gets nothing…,” Pitroda said on Wednesday.
“So these are the kind of issues people will have to debate and discuss. I don’t know what the conclusion would be at the end of the day but when we talk about redistributing wealth, we are talking about new policies and new programs that are in the interest of the people and not in the interest of super-rich only,” he added.
As reported earlier, a major outrage erupted over Congress’s plans to do an economic survey to find out who owns how much wealth and redistribute it. PM Modi recently attacked the Congress party over this and asserted that Congress will redistribute the wealth to the infiltrators. He warned the voters that according to the Congress party’s announcement if they form the government, gold, silver, ornaments like Mangalsutra, property, etc of Indians will be surveyed to be taken away and redistributed.
Pitroda was earlier in news for asking the middle class ‘not to be selfish’ and be ready to pay more taxes to fund freebie plans of the Congress party.