In bid to promote less-cash economy, the government today announced discount on an array of services from buying petrol to insurance and railway tickets through the digital mode and waived service tax on card transactions of up to Rs 2,000.
A discount of 0.75 per cent will be offered on purchase of petrol and diesel through either credit/debit cards, e-wallets and mobile wallets.
Similarly, 10 per cent and 8 per cent discount will be offered in case of general and life insurance for buying new policy or paying premium online via PSUs websites.
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Announcing 11 decisions to promote digital transactions, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that monthly and seasonal suburban railway tickets purchased through digital mode will get 0.5 per cent discount from January 1.
Online booking of railway tickets will get Rs 10 lakh accident insurance. Those using digital mode to pay for railway catering, accommodation, retiring room will be entitled to discount of 5 per cent.
Jaitley said that public dealings with government departments and PSUs through digital mode will be free of transaction fee and MDR charges.
Also credit/debit card transactions up to Rs 2,000 will be exempt from service tax.
The minister further said 10 per cent discount will be available on use of digital mode for paying for RFID or fast-tags for highway toll.
"We were using excessive amount of cash and very very limited amount of digital transactions till November 8," he said, adding there is cost of transacting in cash which has to be borne by economy.
Jaitley, who had in his Budget for 2017-18 proposed the
'electoral bond scheme' to clean up poll financing, said the bearer instruments can be purchased from authorised banks by cheque and will be redeemable within 3-4 weeks of purchase.
The bonds, which will resemble a promissory note and not an interest-paying debt instrument, will be sold by authorised banks and can be deposited in notified accounts of political parties within the duration of their validity.
"This idea of electoral bonds has been closely debated in the government. Now how do these bonds function? These bonds have to be authorised under a particular scheme under the Income Tax Act. The scheme will be announced once the Finance Bill is passed (this month)," he said.
The bonds will provide confidentiality to the donor but the money so routed will be clean tax-paid money.
"That scheme will have the following features. It will only open for a limited period of time during elections or maybe a little before the elections. The life of a bond will be very short, maybe a few days," he said.
The duration is being kept short as the government does not want them to become an instrument for laundering money or become a parallel currency, he said.
"It will only be available for a few days. The bond can be purchased by any donor by cheque payment from an authorised bank. You can only donate these bonds to political parties. And these will be redeemable within a period of three or four weeks of the purchase of the bond in only one bank account of a political party," he added.
Asked if there is an assessment as to how much of unaccounted money is pumped into campaign financing, Jaitley said: "Compared to the entire size of the economy, it is not very large. Compared to the entire size of cash economy, although there are no estimates, I think it is exaggerated and overstated."
Explaining the process, he said during an election, parties get finances from various levels, besides the funds that the candidate collects. "There is a collection that takes place at every level and therefore I don't think to have a clear estimate is really possible," he said.
