Stock advisory Company, Taxing agriculture: Why hypocrisy over taxing farmers must end

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The alacrity with which NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya and finance minister Arun Jaitley rushed to assure farmers they would not be taxed—after NITI member Bibek Debroy recommended this—is odd since it makes it look as if even the thought of this is anti-national. There can be little doubt farmers are doing a good job under trying circumstances and adverse government policies—like an export ban each time prices rise—but applying this yardstick would mean large parts of the industry that have to deal with rapacious inspectors/taxmen and inexplicable government policy should also be exempted. So, the first thing to do is to bring some rationality into the debate. One newspaper has articulated the official position when it says that, thanks to fragmentation of land, farming has become unremunerative—it says that while income tax is charged only at incomes of Rs 2.5 lakh a year, a farmer needs to have at least 10 hectares to earn as much. So, quoting an NSS study, it concludes, only a minuscule minority of those with an agriculture income will come into the tax net.