Mia Holmgren: the Income tax was halved - but only less than two per cent pay

In India, the lives of 1.3 billion people, nearly a sixth of the world population and 130 times as many as in Sweden. Sifferjämförelser with India may, in most cases, Sweden, to appear to be too small. In India, 400 million to smart phones. The last decade has the use of private cars has exploded and just in the capital city of New Delhi is filled traffic of 1,400 new cars each and every day. In Sweden a power outage that affects 1.300 households the headlines, in India it is not uncommon that problems with electricity supply affecting several hundred million people.

There are many examples, but a context in which the sifferskillnaden is small between Sweden oh India is the number of taxpayers. In Sweden declared 7.967.000 people last year, almost all adults in the country. In the populous India, it was 20 million that paid income tax, only 1.7 percent of the population.

”We are largely a society that does not pay taxes. When too many shirking the tax falls the burden on the honest," said the finance minister ArunJaitley a few years ago. In an attempt to change the state of things will halve the hindunationalistiska the government, the tax rate for the lowest income earners. It was also an attempt to move the money and wages to the formal sector.

is very different from the Swedish. Nine out of ten jobs are in the informal sector. Tens of millions of people who work on construction sites, in restaurants and as drivers and maids. They receive their salary directly in hand.

Shamsher Khan subsist on odd jobs. Photo: Mia Holmgren

More than half of the population live in villages and subsist on agriculture, but jobs in the countryside become fewer. Each day will therefore be a steady stream of people to big cities in search of work. Shamsher Khan (pictured) is fairly typical. He comes from the state of Uttar Pradesh and supplying the parents, wife and children with temporary odd jobs in the megacity of Mumbai. His small income will never in the proximity of the annual income of the equivalent of 35,000 sek where skattetrappan begins.

it is only ten per cent of the indians who serve more than 35.000 sek. The average income is more than 19.000 sek per year. A third of the population has less than 30 crowns a day to spend at the same time as several hundred million people included in the middle class.

Although most indians for various reasons, will escape income tax, they pay vat. Up until a few years ago, the states of the different rules and percentages, which could make the domestic trade is very complex. One of the current government's greatest achievements is the introduction of a common vat of 14.5 per cent.

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