From Swachh Bharat cess to Fat Tax: Twitterati crack hilarious jokes

It's definitely a bad news for the junk food lovers in the southern state of Kerala. They got a rude shock after the state's CPI (M)-led Left Front government presented its budget for 2016-17 on Friday (July 8).

Perhaps a first-of-its-kind move in the country, the government in the state decided to impose a 14.5 per cent 'fat tax' on burgers, pizzas, tacos, sandwiches, doughnuts and pasta served in restaurants. The latest decision of the government is an attempt to dissuade foodies from consuming junk food and help Kerala earn extra revenue (targeted) of Rs 10 crore. The news brought some comic relief for the users of the micro-blogging site, Twitter.

Twitterati had a field day making fun of Kerala government's decision as the hashtag #FatTax was trending on Twitter on Friday. The tweets clearly indicated the grouse of the common man against centre and state governments' attempts to impose tax and cess on various goods, commodities and services. To provide a boost to the clean India initiative, the government in 2015 imposed a Swachh Bharat cess of 0.5% on all services liable for service tax, effective from November 15, 2015.

Here we bring you some of the tweets:

"Govt should also tax jeans with a waist size of 32 and above #FatTax," tweeted Be Yusuf (@barmare_yusuf).
"#FatTax Now, a new way to steal public money by imposing useless taxes. 14.5% tax on junk food is hilarious!!!," tweeted कृष्णभक्त Shivam (@shivam7066).

[Read: 'Fat tax' for junk food proposed in Kerala budget]

"Look at the actors and actresses in Malayalam films. Even the films shud be taxed #FatTax," tweeted Amit A (@Amit_smiling).

"The full value chain is covered: #fattax at the input end, toilet tax #SwachhBharat tax at the output end," tweeted supriyo gupta (@supriyo666).

OneIndia News