Tax Alert! You could soon be paying cess for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan!

As the Indian government wants to scale up PM Narendra Modi’s ambitious ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ and invest around Rs 2.23 lakh crore by October 2019, it may levy cess from the common man even to provide basic sanitation.

The government is mulling over levying 0.5% cess on petrol, diesel and telecom services, a 1% cess on accumulated waste produced by mineral generation plants and a 0.5 percentage point increase in service tax.

If everything falls in place, this could be announced during Union Budget on February 29.

This recommendation was given by a sub-group of chief ministers on Swachh Bharat set up by Niti Aayog.

"The sharing pattern of funds for this programme between the Centre and states may be in the ratio of 75:25, while for hilly states it may be kept at 90:10," said the sub-group.

Under the cleanliness drive, the government wants to construct household toilets, community and public toilets and scientific waste management.

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