Did you know? Cess you pay remains underutilised or diverted

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Did you cringe the news that Swachh Bharat Cess will increase the cost of services availed by you? You may rue such additional levies and cesses more, when you come to know that a significant part of these taxes paid by you to the government in the past have remained unutilised or have been diverted to other purposes.

According to The Times of India report, the Comptroller and Auditor General has noted and questioned the rationale of imposing such levies and has listed half a dozen such funds the government has created over the past decade but were not spent properly.

As per the report, the CAG has noted that around Rs 3 lakh crore were collected by the government over the decade, but these funds were either underutilized, or diverted to some other purpose. Some of the these levies that were collected were education cess, levy collected to increase the spend on R&D, Universal Service Obligation Fund.