Cabinet clears decks for CM, Ministers, LoP to pay own income tax from March 2018
The Punjab cabinet on Monday cleared the decks for its members, led by Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, to pay their own Income Tax beginning March 2018. The draft amendment Bills for relevant changes to 'The East Punjab Ministers' Salaries Act, 1947 and 'The Salaries and Allowances of Deputy Ministers, Punjab Act, 1956' will be presented in the Budget Session of the Vidhan Sabha, commencing tomorrow. Being in the rank of Cabinet Minister, the Leader of Opposition will also come under the ambit of the new legislation. Disclosing this here, a spokesperson of the Chief Minister's Office said that the Cabinet decided to omit section 2-C of 'The East Punjab Ministers' Salaries Act, 1947 and section 7-A of 'The Salaries and Allowances of Deputy Ministers, Punjab Act, 1956', to facilitate the change. In a landmark decision, the Cabinet had, on February 15, 2018, passed a unanimous resolution to make this vital change, which will help generate considerable savings in the State Exchequer. At present, payment of income tax of the Chief Minister and all Cabinet and State Ministers is done from the state exchequer under the provisions of section 2-C of "The East Punjab Ministers Salaries Act, 1947". In addition to this, the payment of income tax of the Deputy Ministers is also done from the State exchequer under the section 7-A of "The Salaries and Allowances of Deputy Ministers, Punjab, Act 1956. The income tax being paid by the Punjab government on this account stands at Rs. 11.08 crore. While the bulk of Rs 10.72 crore is for payment of income tax of MLAs, the remaining is for the ministers.
