Budget 2018: Personal income tax unchanged; other key highlights of Arun Jaitley's fifth budget

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday did not provide any relief in the income tax rates for 2018-19. “The government had made many positive changes in the personal income-tax rate applicable to individuals in the last three years,” Jaitley said in his Budget speech. “Therefore, I do not propose to make any further change in the structure of the income tax rates for individuals.” In order to provide relief to salaried taxpayers, Jaitley proposed to “allow a standard deduction of Rs 40,000 in lieu of the present exemption in respect of transport allowance and reimbursement of miscellaneous medical expenses”. In the Budget 2017-18, Jaitley had reduced the income tax rate to 5 percent from 10 percent under the income slab from Rs 2.5 lakh per annum to Rs 5 lakh per annum. Here are the key takeaways from the Union Budget. *Revised fiscal deficit estimate for 2017-18 is 3.5 percent of GDP, fiscal deficit of 3.3 percent expected for 2018-19 *Companies with turnover of up to Rs. 250 crore to be taxed at 25 percent *Standard deduction of Rs 40,000 introduced in lieu of transport and medical reimbursements for salaried employees *Propose to tax long term capital gains exceeding Rs 1 lakh at 10 percent without indexation *Propose to introduce tax on distributed income by equity oriented mutual funds at 10 percent [caption id=“attachment_4330275” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] A file image of FM Arun Jaitley. PTI.[/caption] *For senior citizens, exemption of interest income on bank deposits raised to Rs 50,000 *Govt to contribute 12 percent of EPF contribution for new employees in all sectors *Women employees’ contribution to EPF to be reduced to 8 percent from 10 percent for the first 3 years *Custom duty on mobile phones increased to 20 percent from 15 percent *8 crore free gas connections to women under Ujjwala and 4 crore electricity connections to the poor under Saubhagya Yojana *Propose to earmark Rs 56,000 crore for SCs and Rs 39,000 crore for STs *Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJBY) to be expanded to all poor households *5 lakh WiFi hotspots to be set up in rural areas to provide easy Internet access *Rs 7,148 crore outlay for textile sector in 2018-19 *Allocation of Rs 1.38 lakh crore in FY19 for govt health & education programmes; Will soon announce measures for SME NPAs *Government to take all steps to eliminate use of cryptocurrencies which are being used to fund illegitimate transactions *Rs 80,000 crore disinvestment target for 2018-19, target for 2017-18 has been exceeded and will reach Rs 1 lakh crore *Government insurance companies to be merged into a single entity, and subsequently listed in the stock exchange, as part of the disinvestment programme *SEBI To consider mandate for large corps to meet 25 percent of debt needs from bond market Agriculture *The Minimum Support Price of all crops shall be increased to at least 1.5 times that of the production cost *470 APMCs have been connected to eNAM network, the rest to be connected by March 2018 *Agri-Market Development Fund with a corpus of Rs 2,000 crore to be set up for developing agricultural markets *Proposed to raise institutional credit for agriculture to Rs 11 Lakh crore for 2018-19 from Rs 10 lakh for 2017-18 *100 percent tax deduction for the first five years to companies registered as farmer producer companies with a turnover of Rs. 100 crore and above *Rs 500 crore for Operation Green *Allocation in food processing is being doubled (from Rs 750 crore to Rs 1,400 crore) to boost food processing; specialised agro-processing and financial institutions to be promoted by government *Restructured National Bamboo Mission to be launched with an allocation of Rs 1,290 crore rupees to promote bamboo sector in a holistic manner *Cluster-model approach to be adopted for agricultural production *Fishery and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund and Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Fund to be set up - total corpus Rs 10,000 crore *Removal of crop residue to be subsidized in order to tackle the problem of pollution due to burning of crop residue *Grameen Agricultural Market (GRAM) will provide farmers a means to sell directly to buyers Education *Eklavya schools to be started for Scheduled Tribe population *Integrated B.Ed programme to be initiated for teachers, to improve quality of teachers *Scheme for revitalizing school infrastructure, with an allocation of Rs 1 lakh crore over four years. Called RISE - Revitalising Infrastructure in School Education *Finance Minister says will set up PM Research Fellow Scheme; 1,000 B-Tech students to be selected *Two new planning & architecture schools to be set up in IITs. One government medical college to be ensured for every 3 parliamentary constituencies by upgrading 24 district-level colleges Healthcare *Two major schemes for health, one being health and wellness centres. *Providing medical reimbursement of Rs 5 lakh per family per year under National Health Protection Scheme to cover 10 crore poor and vulnerable families, benefiting approx. 50 crore. This will be world’s largest health protection scheme. *Allocation of Rs 600 crore for nutritional support to all tuberculosis patients Infrastructure *Infrastructure outlay increased from Rs 4.94 lakh crore to Rs 5.9 lakh crore FY19 *Rs 1,48,528 crore - the capital expenditure for Indian Railways for 2018-19 *Rs 14.34 lakh crore to be spent for rural infrastructure *Propose to expand airport capacity by 5-times to handle 1 billion passengers *Allocation of Rs 11,000 crore for Mumbai rail network *FM Says will add 90 Km of tracks to Mumbal’s local train network at Rs 11,000 crore. To also allocate Rs 17,000 crore for Bengaluru Metro network *All railways stations with more than 25,000 footfall to have escalators. *12,000 wagons, 5160 coaches and 700 locomotives being procured. *AMRUT program to focus on water supply to all households in 500 cities. Water supply contracts for 494 projects worth 19,428 core awarded *Proposed construction of tunnel under the Se-La pass in Arunachal Pradesh *UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam naagrik) scheme will connect 56 unserved airports and 31 unserved helipads *Govt plans to construct 2 crore more toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission MSME *Target of 3 lakh crore for lending under Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana *99 percent of MSMEs to be taxed at 25 percent. Click here for full coverage of Union Budget 2018 .