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Does The Jain Community Contribute Over 24% To Total Tax Collection? No, There Is No Official Data On It
India, 13 Jan 2023 10:28 AM GMT
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A viral claim has been making the rounds of social media which alleges that the Jain community contributes more than 24% to total tax collection. The claim has been circulated by StudyIQ IAS in a video that has garnered over 3.7 lakh views on YouTube.
A viral claim has been making the rounds of social media which alleges that the Jain community contributes more than 24% to total tax collection. The claim has been circulated by StudyIQ IAS in a video that has garnered over 3.7 lakh views on YouTube.
Claim:
Founder of Omkara Capital and former corporate editor at CNBC India, Varinder Bansal, shared a tweet on September 19, 2022, claiming,
"The Jain community forms less than 0.4% of India's population. However, they contribute more than 24% to personal tax. Jains own more than 28% of Indian property and have the highest literacy rate at 94.1%. 46% of India's stockbrokers are Jains."
Other users across social media have amplified this claim across Twitter and Facebook.
StudyIQ IAS, an educational YouTube channel with 13.6 million subscribers, published a video on October 18, 2022. At the 0.53 mark in the video, the claim reads, "As per Census 2011, the Jain community consists of just 0.4% of the Indian population, but it contributes more than 24% in total tax collection."
Fact Check:
The Logical Indian Fact-Check team verified the viral claim and found it to be false. There is no official figures focusing on collecting direct tax in relation to religion.
We checked the Census 2011 for details about the population of the Jain community. A press release from the Ministry of Home Affairs, detailing data released by Registrar General and Census Commissioner, said, "Total Population in 2011 was 121.09 crores; Hindu 96.63 crores (79.8%); Muslim 17.22 crores…Jain 0.45 crores (0.4%), Other Religions & Persuasions (ORP) 0.79 crores (0.7%), and Religion Not Stated 0.29 crores (0.2%)."
As per the website Census 2011, which collates data related to the decennial Census, the population of the Jain community is the largest in the state of Maharashtra, at 1,400,349 people comprising 1.25 per cent of the state's population.
We then checked the website of the Income Tax Department. As per a document titled Income Tax Return Statistics Assessment Year 2018-19, published in October 2019, the methodology of the Income Tax Department underlines Individual, Hindu Undivided Family, Firms, Associations of Persons or Bodies of Individuals, Companies, and Others.
Apart from Hindu Undivided Family, there is no other religious community which is identified by the Income Tax Department. As per the Income Tax Department, Jain and Sikh families, even though are not governed by the Hindu Law, but they are treated as HUF under the Act.
The states with the largest population of Jains are Maharashtra, Delhi and Gujarat, with a total Jain population of 21,46,234 out of 18,96,01,966 people residing in these states, as per the Census 2011.
As per an India Today article published on March 24, 2022, provided a breakdown of the tax collection in the states of Maharashtra, Delhi and Gujarat. The country's tax revenues for the past six years (2013-14 to 2018-19) show that Maharashtra leads in tax revenues amounting to taxes of Rs 19,17,944.98 crore, and is followed by Delhi (Rs 6,93,275.11 crore) and Karnataka (Rs 4,99,310.99 crore).
However, the report also underlines that the high direct tax revenue in Delhi, Maharashtra and Karnataka can be attributed to these regions being where the corporate sector, employing a large section of India's salaried class, are concentrated. "A majority of these salaried people are generally migrants from other states, with Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal being dominant contributors to the corporate workforce," the report notes.
Conclusion:
Through our investigation, we found that no official figures are available on collecting direct tax in relation to religion. There are also no official figures on the separate category of the Jain community in the data collection under the category of the Hindu Undivided Family.
If you have any news that you believe needs to be fact-checked, please email us at factcheck@thelogicalindian.com or WhatsApp at 6364000343.
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