Telangana President Jagruthi and former state legislative councilor Kalvakuntla Kavitha on Friday appealed to the Center to provide complete temporary relief, instead of partial or enhanced tax relief on severance packages offered by technology companies to their employees during their layoff.
Taking to
She said severance packages are currently taxed under “earnings rather than salary” as per the Income Tax Act 1961. In effect, this results in employees being taxed at the very moment they lose their source of income – when financial vulnerability is at its peak.
“While the current provisions provide limited exceptions depending on how the termination is structured, they are neither adequate nor responsive to the reality of sudden and widespread layoffs,” said Kavitha, daughter of former Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
She noted that large-scale layoffs did not represent additional relief, but called for a decisive, one-time policy response. “There is a compelling case for granting full, temporary tax relief on severance packages to individuals affected by these layoffs,” she said.
This will ensure that affected families retain the full financial cushion allocated to support them during the period of transition and uncertainty, Kavitha said.
In an earlier post on She cautioned that the rapid push towards AI should not come at the expense of workers’ livelihoods, especially in Hyderabad.
“I’ve said it in the past, and I’ll say it again! This is beyond scary. First, Jack Dorsey’s 4,000, now reports of massive layoffs at Oracle (about 30,000) impacting the lives of over 12,000 people in India, mostly in hubs like Hyderabad,” she tweeted.
She said that although artificial intelligence is a necessary tool for the future, it should not be the death knell for our workers today. “The @revanth_anumula govt seems completely ignorant, ignoring the elephant in the room while our IT professionals face this uncertainty. Telangana needs a road map now. Who is looking out for these thousands of families?” Kavitha asked.
