(ET)
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman signalled that the government may extend the lower corporate tax rate of 25% to all companies, giving India Inc something to cheer about. Her July 5 budget had lowered the rate for most companies but excluded the biggest.
“We brought it down in order that now 99.3% of all industries are covered by the 25% rate,” Sitharaman said in her reply to the discussion on the appropriation and finance bills in the Rajya Sabha.“Therefore, hardly any are left behind… We shall cover them sooner.” She said this was a commitment that had been given in the debut budget of the first Narendra Modi government in 2014 and it had to be honoured. “The promise that corporate tax rate would be brought down has been kept,” she said.
