Not a new tax. Not a donation. A share of what you already owe, sent to the school, health centre, or panchayat that made your success possible — chosen by you, and changeable every year.
You choose how the 5% is split, and among which institutions. Your total tax does not change by a single rupee. Next year, if an institution has not used it well, you send it somewhere else.
Income tax is collected centrally, then devolved to states by the Finance Commission's formula. That formula is blind to which state produced you, and it stops at the state treasury.
An engineer taught in a Bihar village school, now working in Bangalore, generates tax that Bihar shares in only through a general allocation — unconnected to its role in producing that citizen, and reaching no particular classroom.
This proposal changes nothing about how tax is collected or devolved. It adds the one channel a formula structurally cannot provide.
The 73rd and 74th Amendments made panchayats and urban wards institutions of self-government. Our fiscal practice never quite followed.
Furusato Nōzei lets taxpayers send a share of residence tax to their home town. In FY 2024 it moved ¥1.2 trillion across 1,785 municipalities, and slowed rural decline.
The HEART programme gives a full state income tax credit for contributions to a rural hospital the taxpayer chooses. Extended through 2029, with support from both parties.
Both documents are free to read, quote, and forward.
I was educated entirely in Indian public institutions — SSR ZP High School in Bhimanapalli, then JNTU Kakinada and IIT Kanpur — and served the Government of India at Prasar Bharati and at ISRO before joining the private sector.
That school, in my home village of Nangavaram, Andhra Pradesh, has produced DRDO scientists, CCMB researchers, professors abroad, entrepreneurs, teachers, and bank officers. Its infrastructure today is well below what that record could have supported. I have given what an individual can give. It does not solve a structural problem.