The new I-T Bill is centred on simplifying legalese. However, much more can be done, including ranking ministries by how they draft their laws to making plainly written laws available in all Indian languages
Laws are meant to be dense and jargon-infested. Until now. In a bold move, GOI has introduced a simply written new Income Tax Bill in Parliament. The present Income Tax Act, 1961 is the symbol of legal gobbledygook. It has 819 sections. Some of these sections have over 50 sub-sections each. Most of these have clauses, sub-clauses and provisos. Some have further provisos to provisos. All this comes together to a total of 512,535 words. For reference, Valmiki’s Ramayan in English is around 480,000 words long and has a story. It’s not surprising that most Indians have read parts of Ramayan but so few Indians pay income tax.