Budget 2019 LIVE UPDATES | No need of PAN, taxpayers can file I-T returns by quoting Aadhaar number
NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented a please-all Budget on Friday giving something for everyone.
The NDA government's first budget (of its second term) unleashed structural reforms to kickstart growth, raised full income tax exemption limit to Rs 5 lakh, opened up sectors such as aviation, insurance, media and real estate to FDI, allowed private sector participation in agriculture and rolled out a bevy of incentives for FIIs, and FPIs.
Budget 2020 didn't really encompass big-ticket projects but had several champions neatly segmented into rural and urban proposals to ensure uniformity. Pension benefits for 3 crore retail traders and shopkeepers with an annual turnover of Rs 1.5 crore, building of 1.95 crore houses by 2022, Rs 80,000 crore for road projects, setting up a social stock exchange to help entities working with social objectives to raise capital via equity, debt or units like mutual funds, the Budget had it all.
While the middle-class got tax breaks, particularly on housing loans which as a sum of parts stretched to Rs 7 lakh over 15 years, the axe, however, fell on the super-rich. In view of the rising income levels, Sithamaraman proposed to tax the rich, enhancing surcharge for those with an income between Rs 2 crore and 5 crore and Rs 5 crore and above, with their effective tax rates going up by 3 and 7 per cent respectively. As part of simplifying filing of tax returns, mandatory use of PAN card is eliminated, besides making Aadhaar inter-changeable with PAN. Soon faceless e-assessments with zero human interface too will chip in.
In all, Sitharaman presented an expansive budget of Rs 27.8 lakh crore for FY20, up from the previous year's Rs 24 lakh crore. Gross tax revenue will likely grow at a modest 9.5 per cent, with Direct taxes growing at 11.3 per cent at Rs 13,35,000 crore, while indirect taxes will rake in Rs 11,22,015 crore, with full benefits of GST likely to start coming in only from next fiscal.
READ FULL REPORT: A please-all Budget for everyone from Nirmala Sitharaman
Sitharaman becomes the second woman finance minister after Indira Gandhi to present the budget in the history of independent India.
In a departure from a colonial-era tradition, Sitharaman carried the budget papers in a 'bahi khata', which is a ledger, wrapped in a red coloured cloth, instead of a briefcase.
This is the 89th Union budget, which is the financial statement of the government, detailing its revenue and expenditure in the past, as well as estimated spending and projections for the coming year.
The Railway Budget was also presented today along with the Union Budget. Until 2016, it was presented separately.
The Finance Minister on Thursday tabled in Parliament the pre-Budget Economic Survey for 2018-19, which projected the state of the economy and outlined its challenges.