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Now, as I said, the Finance Bill deals with taxes. My friend, Shri Rupchand Pal raised some fundamental issues. I would like to respond to some of those issues. He made the point that tax-GDP ratio was declining. That is a fact because the tax-GDP ratio in 1990-91 was 10.8 per cent. That was a crisis year, but still the tax-GDP ratio was 10.8 per cent, one of the highest that we have seen ever and it declined and it continued to decline for various reasons. But I am happy to inform this House that the ratio has gone up from 8.2 per cent of the GDP in 1998-99 to 8.9 per cent in 1999-2000. We are on the way up and, once again, I would like to say that this ratio will go up. The tax-GDP ratio will go up. I would like to mention some facts here.

Shri Rupchand Pal also referred to the ratio of direct and indirect taxes. I have some figures here. The ratio of direct to indirect tax in 1991-92 was only 19.1 per cent for direct taxes and 78.4 per cent for indirect taxes. However, in 1999-2000, the direct tax share had gone up to 33.5 per cent and the indirect tax share had come down to 65.9 per cent. This is a very healthy trend. This is not an accident, but this is the result of the conscious policies that we have followed.

What are the conscious policies that we have followed? From 1993-94 to 1996-97 – this is a very important fact that I would like to bring to the notice of the House – the number of tax payers in the Income Tax, direct tax side, continued to hover around one crore mark. There was no jump and there was no increase in 1997-98. The credit must be given to the U.F. Government’s Minister of Finance, Shi P. Chidambaram, who, unfortunately, is not in the House today. Shri Chidambaram came out with the two-by-four formula and a result of that two-by-four formula in 1997-98, we added 15.24 lakh new assessees in the year 1997-98. The House will recall that in 1998-99 Budget I changed that formula from two-by-four to one-by-six, and also extended the coverage and made the quotation of PAN compulsory for high value transactions. There were some criticisms even in this House as to why I was doing it.

The other issue that was raised here – I think again Shri Rupchand Pal raised that issue – was about the dispute which arose with public sector undertakings in regard to payment of tax. MTNL’s case was cited. It was unfortunate that there was a misunderstanding and MTNL went to the High Court. MTNL was told that the Tax Department was in the right and, therefore, they ended up paying the tax which had been demanded.

But the other point which had been made that we were being soft to the multinational companies is not a fair criticism of the Government’s tax administration. I would like to say that it was under my leadership of the Finance Ministry that we caught hold of the MNCs who were not deducting tax at source. I ensured that they were surveyed. As a result of that, in 1998-99 we ended up collected Rs. 600 crore from the leading MNCs operating in this country. This is the attitude that we have towards the MNCs.

Sir, another issue was raised here. I think, Shri Rupchand Pal made much of it. I was very scared because I do not know where he has caught me, and Shri Somnath Chatterjee was also nodding violently in agreement with him. What was it? It was about clauses 100 and 101 of the Finance Bill. Now, what do Clauses 100 and 101 of the Finance Bill say? The earlier arrangement was that the Department could employ a Chartered Accountant to carry out the audit of the accounts of a company which we wanted to be audited, and the law was that we will not only collect taxes on the basis of those audited accounts, but we will also charge the fees of the Auditor from that company. Now, I have made it a little more user-friendly. I have said that we will not charge that person or that company the fees for the Chartered Accountant. If the Department employs a Chartered Accountant, then the Department itself will pay that fees. So, there is absolutely nothing here to….