Govt may impose surcharge on income above 1 crore

The government might impose a surcharge on income tax on the “super rich”; and, an option being considered is bringing individuals with taxable income of over Rs 1 crore within its ambit.The government is undertaking an exercise to find out how much tax could be collected if a surcharge is imposed on various thresholds of taxable income — from over Rs 50 lakh to over Rs 1 crore. There are over 400,000 individuals in the country with taxable incomes beyond Rs 20 lakh. However, there is no public data available for those in the Rs 1-crore-plus bracket.Finance ministry officials said, in order to levy a tax on super rich, it was important to first define “super rich”. The government is cautious that the threshold is not so high that the tax department gets little revenue boost, or so low that it hurts a large chunk of the taxpayer base.