Delhi Chamber of Commerce

New Delhi
Sub: Increase of Tax Benefit on meal allowance from Rs. 50/- to Rs.
200/- in digital format which alone create 100000 jobs and gulps black
money and generates over Rs. 2.5 billion as financial benefit to
Government of India.

Respected sir,

Governments world over are increasingly looking at providing multiple

benefits to its workforce and India is no exception to it. The current
Government is more than proactive in ensuring that employees in
particular get not only their due but are very well looked after in terms of
their health by employers as Fit India is Fine India.
In India context, this program has so many positive impacts that we can
consider the Meal Voucher/Card system as a self-financed social benefit
program. Studies after studies have shown that Government, employers
and employees benefit in more ways than one if the below provisions
are made in the existing policy:

1. To increase current tax benefit on meal allowance from value of

Rs. 50 per meal to Rs. 200/- per meal in electronic meal card.
Increase this value only for electronic meal card will help Govt.
to move towards less cash economy as prescribed by RBI in its
Payment System Vision Document released in October, 2012.

2. Revision of the tax benefit on meal allowance from per meal to

per month in Meal Card effectively meaning the usage of the
card changing from purchase per meal to consumption per
month as the value of meal consumed each day varies
depending on the employees needs on that particular day.
Taking into account that the average working days in a month
are 25 and if we consider at least one meal per day, the monthly
limit would be equal to the revised limit per meal multiplied by
25, the number of working days per month.

Benefits to government
1. Promotion of Meal Card system will convert informal economy
into formal one and thus generate more revenues and
employment opportunities for the government and the country.

2. The government benefits from the system by the collection of

additional direct and indirect taxes from voucher/card issuing
companies and participating outlets.

Currently the government is earning net revenue Rs.

1.50 on issuance of existing Meal Voucher/ Card of
every Rs. 100/- which will increase to Rs 1.70 in next 2
years resulting to net financial benefit for the govt. to
over Rs. 2.5 billion.