India's opposition Congress asks Modi to tax billionaires more

NEW DELHI — India's main opposition Congress party asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday (July 12) to impose an additional tax on the country's billionaires to generate funds for stretched public services like education and health.

The annual budget will be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on July 23 at a time of deepening income inequality and high unemployment despite India's world-beating economic growth of nearly eight per cent and booming stock markets.

Jairam Ramesh, senior Congress party leader, said in a post on X that a two per cent tax on the wealth of India's estimated 167 billionaires could raise as much as 1.5 trillion rupees (S$24.1 billion) or about 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product.

"This could pay for schools, hospitals, renewable energy, and many more essential investments," he said, urging the government to tax the super-rich more.

Wealth concentrated in the hands of the richest one per cent of India's population is at its greatest level for six decades and its percentage share of national income exceeds that of countries including Brazil and the US, research group the World Inequality Lab reported earlier this year.

Opposition parties are pressing the government to take steps to increase spending on welfare programmes after Modi lost his majority in parliament and had to rely on coalition allies to return to office for the third time.

Government officials earlier ruled out the possibility of taxing the wealth of the ultra-rich, arguing it could encourage them to move to low-tax countries.

Congress also asked Modi to clarify what would be India's position at the G20 meeting in Brazil later this month on the issue of supporting a global tax on billionaires, a proposal pushed