India’s losing $10.3 billion in taxes per year due to tax abuse by MNCs, individual evasion

NEW DELHI: India is losing over USD 10.3 billion (about Rs 75,000 crore) in taxes every year owing to global tax abuse by MNCs and evasion by private individuals, a report said on Friday. The State of Tax Justice report said globally countries are losing a total of over USD 427 billion in taxes each year to international corporate tax abuse and private tax evasion. This is costing countries altogether the equivalent of nearly 34 million nurses’ annual salaries every year — or one nurse’s annual salary every second.

With regard to India, the report said USD 10.3 billion, or 0.41 per cent of the USD 3 trillion GDP, is lost in taxes every year to global tax abuse.

Of this, over USD 10 billion is lost to tax abuse by multinational corporations (MNCs) and USD 200 million to tax evasion committed by private individuals.

The social impact of the lost tax is equivalent to 44.70 per cent of the health budget and 10.68 per cent of education spending. It also equals paying yearly salaries of over 42.30 lakh nurses.

It further said India is most vulnerable to illicit financial flows in the form of outward FDI and listed Mauritius, Singapore and the Netherlands as the trading partners which are most responsible for this vulnerability.

The State of Tax Justice report has been published by the Tax Justice Network, together with global union federation Public Services International and the Global Alliance for Tax Justice.

The report highlights the state of global tax abuse and governments’ efforts to tackle the menace.