Union Budget 2022: Important terms you may find handy ahead of Nirmala Sitharaman's speech

The Union Budget is upon us!

On Tuesday, all eyes will be on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman as she will present the Union Budget in Parliament.

Terms such as fiscal deficit, revenue receipts, capital expenditure, cess, tax, gross domestic product (GDP) and many more will feature in her budget speech.

But what do these mean? Do they leave you confused?

We try to make the budget a bit simpler to comprehend with this small guide.

Capital Expenditure

Capital expenditure is the money spent by the government on the development of machinery, equipment, building, health facilities, education, etc.

Capital expenditure is the part of the government spending that goes into the creation of assets like schools, colleges, hospitals, roads, bridges, dams, railway lines, airports and seaports.

Capital expenditure also covers the acquisition of equipment and machinery by the government, including those for defence purposes. Capital expenditure also includes investment by the government that yields profits or dividend in future.

In 2020-21, the Budget estimate of the government’s capital expenditure was Rs 1,084,748 crore.

Cess

Cess is an additional levy on the basic tax liability. Governments resort to cess for meeting specific expenditure. For instance, the Swachh Bharat cess is levied by the government for cleanliness activities that it is undertaking across India.

A cess, generally paid by everyday public, is added to their basic tax liability paid as part of total tax paid.

Cess is different from taxes in two aspects: One, it is imposed as an additional tax besides the existing tax. Secondly, the proceeds of a cess may or may not be shared with the state governments, while that of taxes have to be shared.

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The government imposes different types of cess: Education cess, health cess, fuel cess, clean energy cess and Krishi Kalyan cess.

Fiscal deficit

This is the gap between the government’s total spending and the sum of its revenue receipts and non-debt capital receipts. It represents the total amount of borrowed funds required by the government to completely meet its expenditure.

The gap is bridged through additional borrowing from the Reserve Bank of India, issuing government securities etc. The fiscal deficit is one of the major contributors to inflation.

Public debt

Simply put, public debt is the total amount, including total liabilities, borrowed by the government to meet its development budget.

Public debt can be split into internal (money borrowed within the country) and external (funds borrowed from non-Indian sources). Internal debt comprises treasury bills, market stabilisation schemes, ways and means advance, and securities against small savings.

Inflation

Inflation is the situation where prices of the goods generally increase and purchasing value of money falls in an economy.

In India, there are two main sets of inflation indices to measure changes in price levels — Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index (WPI). CPI tracks any shift in retail prices of essential and daily goods and services consumed by households across the country. In short, it captures changes in price level at the consumer level.

WPI, on the other hand, is the average change in the price of commodities at the wholesale level. It considers the price of goods traded among corporations, not goods purchased by consumers.

Gross Domestic Product

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the value of the goods and services produced within the country during a year. GDP is the measure of the country’s economic output. In India, contributions to GDP are largely divided into three sectors - agriculture, industry, and services.

Economists state that GDP growth rate is the most important indicator of economic health.

Disinvestment

When the government sells or liquidates any of its asset or subsidiary (some or all of it), we call it Disinvestment’. It is also called ‘divestment’ or ‘divestiture.’

The term has been in the news in recent times with the sale of national carrier Air India to the Tata group.

Disinvestment helps the government in raising non-tax revenue and to exit loss-making ventures.

Non-Tax Revenue

Besides taxes, the government also earns a recurring income, which is called non-tax revenue.

For example, when citizens use services offered by the government, they pay bills, which are categorised as non-tax revenue, as the government provides infrastructure support to implement the services.

Personal income tax

One reason why everyone is concerned with the Budget is income tax.

Income tax is a direct tax that a government levies on the income of its citizens. The Income Tax Act, 1961, mandates that the central government collect this tax. The government can change the income slabs and tax rates every year in its Union Budget.

A person’s income tax is dependent on the slab they fall in. The government has created slabs like — up to Rs 2,50,000, Rs 2,50,000-Rs 5,00,000, Rs 5,00,000-Rs 1 crore, and more than Rs 1 crore. The tax is calculated on these basis.

Corporate tax

Corporate tax is a direct tax levied on a company or a corporation on their profits. For this, the company estimates the operating earnings after expenses (like the cost of goods sold (COGS) and revenue depreciation) pays the enacted tax rates to the government.

Short term and Long term capital gain tax

Capital gains mean the profit earned by an individual on the sale of his investment in assets such as stocks, real estate, bonds, commodities, etc.

In India, there is a long term capital gains tax and a short term capital gains tax.

The terms long term and short term are defined through the Income Tax Act, 1961. According to the law, a period of one year is long term for equities and two years for real estate.

Also please read:

• Union Budget 2022-23: Understanding the government's annual financial statement

• Union Budget 2022-23: From issuance of circulars to printing, how the Budget is brought to life

• Union Budget 2022-2023: What's in the Budget briefcase and the history behind the bag

• Budget 2022: Long, short and everything interesting about the annual financial statement

With inputs from agencies

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