24% of India’s MPs, MLAs are exempt from income tax or have no income

In what might come as a surprise to many, 24 percent of the country’s MPs and MLAs have claimed exemption from income tax or said they have no income at all, according to tax returns filed a year before they were elected.

The deduction was made based on the analysis of affidavits of 4,848 (of 4,910) Congress and BJP lawmakers. Overall, 75 percent of MPs and MLAs nationwide declared annual incomes less than Rs 10 lakh.

Around 35 percent of lawmakers said their annual income is less than Rs 2.5 lakh while 40 percent have declared annual income between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh.

As many as 1,141 (24 percent) MPs and MLAs claimed exemption from income tax or have no income at all.

‘We can conclude that we are largely a tax non-compliant society,’ Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, sarcastically, during his budget speech on February 1.

Sharing income tax data, Jaitley said that of 37 million individuals (of a total population of close to 1.3 billion) who filed tax returns in 2015-16, 9.9 million (27 percent) declared annual incomes below the exemption limit of Rs 2.5 lakh; 19.5 million (53 percent) declared annual incomes between Rs 2.5 lakh and Rs 5 lakh, while 7.6 million (20 percent) declared annual incomes of more than Rs 5 lakh.

If the annual incomes of family (incomes of spouse and dependents, as declared in their respective tax returns) are added to the incomes of MPs and MLAs, 62 percent legislators’ households have an income less than Rs 10 lakh.

About half (2,410) of MPs and MLAs have declared household assets (movable and immovable assets of the elected member, spouse and dependent/s) of more than Rs 2 crore, of which 912 (38 percent of 2,410) declared family incomes of less than Rs 10 lakh.

Of 1,843 MPs and MLAs with family incomes of more than Rs 10 lakh, 106 declared household assets of less than Rs 1 crore.

Only 25 percent (1,236 of 4,848) of MPs and MLAs declared in tax returns that their annual incomes were more than Rs 10 lakh; 35 percent (1,676 of 4,848) declared incomes less than Rs 2.5 lakh.

While 63 percent Lok Sabha MPs declared annual incomes of less than Rs 10 lakh, only 13 percent Rajya Sabha MPs declared annual incomes of less than Rs 10 lakh.

Among states, over 80 percent of MLAs in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha declared annual incomes less than Rs 10 lakh.

As many as 1,676 (35 percent) elected representatives declared annual incomes less than Rs 2.5 lakh.

Of these, 1,141 (24 percent) reported to the Election Commission that they were either exempt from income tax on various grounds, such as being a farmer, being from an area mentioned in the sixth schedule of the constitution — such as the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura — and so exempt from income tax, or have no income at all.

Only 38 percent (1,843 of 4848) legislators said they had annual family incomes (income of an MP or an MLA and incomes of family, such as spouse and dependents/s), more than Rs 10 lakh; 28 percent (1,343 of 4,848) declared family incomes less than Rs 2.5 lakh.

Half of India’s elected representatives declared household assets of more than Rs 2 crore; 28 percent more than Rs 5 crore. As many as 70 percent of MPs and MLAs had assets more than Rs 1 crore.

Although assets are supposed to be declared by elected representatives at market price, immovable assets are grossly under valued.

During an earlier speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also drawn a correlation between assets and income declared to tax authorities.

“According to information available with the government, only 24 lakh people in India accept that their annual income is more than Rs 10 lakh. If we look at any big city, it would have lakhs of people with annual income of more than Rs 10 lakh,” he had said.

The data also shows a weak correlation between the assets and incomes of MPs and MLAs:

* 38 percent (912 of 2,410) legislators with assets more than Rs 2 crore declared family incomes of less than Rs 10 lakh.

* Of 1,079 lawmakers with assets in the range of Rs 2 crore and Rs 5 crore, only 44 percent (474) declared incomes more than Rs 10 lakh.

* 22 percent (255 of 1,651) with assets between Rs 2 crore and Rs 10 crore declared incomes less than Rs 2.5 lakh.

* 41 percent (891 of 2,155) with assets between Rs 2 crore and Rs 30 crore declared incomes less than Rs 10 lakh.

* Of 156 lawmakers with household assets more than Rs 50 crore, 10 declared incomes less than Rs 10 lakh.

* Of 75 legislators with assets more than Rs 100 crore, four reported incomes less than Rs 2.5 lakh.

* 7 percent (106 out of 1,470) with assets less than Rs 1 crore declared annual incomes more than Rs 10 lakh.

With IANS and IndiaSpend.org inputs